Projects from external hard drive not opening on desktop. Please help.

I use my external hard drive to create, edit and save all my imovie projects. In this external drive I have all my raw clips, events, projects etc.
My home computer is my primary place of work, and I am now trying to open a half edited project from my external hard drive on my daughter's mac. Note this project was saved in imovie 8 and she has imovie 9, although I cannot see this being an issue.
Can anyone else suggest why imovie only opens my events, but doesn't open the project in the project library. I have tried copying the .rcproject from the external hard drive to the desktop along with the events, but to no avail. Any further suggestions, I have a pending deadline.
Thanks.

You should be able to get this to work.
I would suggest the following:
1) Move the RCPROJECT file from the desktop to the Movies/iMovie Projects folder.
2) Use the Events on the external drive. Your project will be pointing to the external drive. It will not know how to find anything on the internal drive.
Then restart iMovie.
This should work, as iMovie is forward compatible. However, once you open the project in iMovie 09, you will no longer be able to open it in iMovie 08. (Of course, you could make a copy of it in its current state.)
I am less sure about your events. Your events will be converted to iMovie 09 format. I don't think you will be able to still open them in iMovie 08. You might if you delete all the cache and thumbnail folders and let iMovie 08 regenerate these, but I am not sure. Your best bet is to upgrade to iMovie 09 or better yet, iMovie 11 on your home computer.

Similar Messages

  • IMovie Project from External Hard Drive not Opening?

    Please help!!
    Fairly new to MACs, iMovie and iDVD, I didn't have a clear understanding of how saving iMovie projects worked. Reading various tutorials, I thought I had a clear understanding of how they work. Apparently not with my recent frustration with iMovie.
    I created several iMovie Projects but needed more space in order to make more projects for my internship thus I did what I thought was common sense -- get an external hard drive.
    I exported iMovie projects into my user account and from there, dragged the saved projects into an external hard drive and then deleted the iMovie projects from my user account.
    However, when I needed to retrieve these projects, I simply turned on my hard drive and clicked on them to open. However, whenever I tried opening them, they wouldn't open. Is it because I didn't export them to the hard drive in the first place?
    What I don't understand is why iMovie is not opening or recognizing the saved iMovie projects from the external hard drive when the size and kind clearly indicate that it should open with iMovie automatically.
    What is the proper way of saving my iMovie projects and events so that I can always have access to whenever I need to open up an old project or simply edit?

    Freeing up space on your Mac hard drive in iMovies ’08.
    The application iMovie ‘08 has two main libraries displayed in the iMovie window: Events and Projects. Events are the main imports from your video camera, say. These files are big and you have the option to save them on an external hard drive and so iMovie knows to find them there. Projects are your editing instructions like what clips you want and where. The files are small and you save them on your Mac hard drive. They are NOT the clips only signposts where to find them (in Events on your external hard drive). You can move Projects to your external hard drive as back-up but iMovie will not find them there. If you then delete Projects from your Mac, iMovie can no longer make use of them unless you manually export them back into iMovie from your external hard drive. See Apple Article HT1026 iMovie '08: Moving iMovie footage to another drive (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1026). Here the external hard disk is used for moving Projects from one computer to another and, by implication, back to the source computer.
    Sharing the projects to iTunes for syncing with Apple TV creates (publishes) movies that take up the same amount of space on your Mac as the source Projects. You can still burn DVDs in iDVD using the iTunes Movies as your Media so provided you have iMovie Projects backed up on your external hard drive you can delete them from your Mac and just use the iTunes Movies (for Apple TV and iDVD). In addition, publishing iMovie Projects in iTunes for syncing to Apple TV results in these files being duplicated in both Movies/iMovies Sharing/iTunes AND in iTunes/iTunes Music/Movies so delete them from here and get even more GBs back! Tell iTunes in Advanced not to save these iTunes published movies anymore in order to stop further duplication ocurring.

  • How can I move my project from external hard drive to my macbook pro?

    How can I move my project from external hard drive to my macbook pro? every time I try to do some editing, the sequence is very slow, thanks in advance

    Try here...
    Setting-up a new Mac from an old one, its backups, or a PC

  • Editing Old Project from External Hard Drive

    Last year my G5 developed an incurable Kernel error issue. I decided to buy a new iMac and have been very pleased. I backed up my system to an external hard drive and now I would like to access an old project from the external drive.
    I selected the external drive and went to the last date of my backup. However, this is where I have no idea how to complete this task. Can I simply open FCE and import the project from the drive? Will all of the media transfer over?
    Would really like to know the ins and outs before I begin and paint myself into a corner. Any help would be appreciated.
    Thanks!

    Tom:
    Not sure what you mean by "restore". I am assuming I will need to do the following:
    1. Open FCE
    2. Import the old project from my external drive
    3. This is where I get lost. Can you please fill in the blanks from her for me. I cannot seem to find the instructions to do this anywhere.
    Thanks!

  • Music from external hard drive not showing up

    I am new to using a mac. I have had an iphone for almost a year so I am catching on quickly to my macbook but this problem has stumped me and all my mac using friends.
    I have a 500gb seagate external hard drive aswell as a new 500gb seagate internal.
    I transferred all my music from an old ipod onto the external hard drive. There is about 50gb of music.
    When I plug my external into my pc desktop I can see the music folder organized into subfolders with files inside that are encoded unless they are opened in itunes. My pc doesn't have enough internal memory to open and store my music library so I have just left it on the hard drive. When I plug the hard drive into my macbook it will show the music folder as having 50gb but when the folder is opened, none of the subfolders or files are visable.
    I went ahead and dragged the folder from my harddrive onto my macbook desktop. It took about an hour to transfer all the files but now the folder is sitting on my desktop and when I open it, it is empty. If i look in the folders info, it says it has the 50gb. If i try to drag and drop it into itunes nothing happens. If I drag and drop it into the itunes music folder, it will go there but will not show up on itunes.
    I'm stumped and no longer eligable for apples telephone support as I bought this macbook from a friend. Any help would be greatly appreciated. (Please use extreme lay terms as i'm just learning the lingo...thx)

    incase anyone is wondering, i figured out how to get the files onto the macbook. I transferred the files from my hard drive onto a flashdrive using my pc and when i plugged the flashdrive into the macbook the files showed up and could be dragged and dropped into itunes! yay!

  • M4v from external hard drive to open in idvd?

    I created a project on imovie, burned a copy of the dvd on idvd, and saved it on an external hard drive (and deleted it from my hard drive). I've lost the copy of that DVD and want to burn another copy, but I can't figure out how to get it to open in idvd.
    Any ideas? Thanks.

    riokim1231,
    maybe you have tried this. but have you gone to edit/preferences/sharing..? you can check share my library on my local network. that should allow you to view content on your mac mini. you can play any content contained in that library. there will be a little arrow to the left of the name of that library. click it and it will show any playlist to include movies and music videos. hope this helps...

  • Boost from external hard drive not allowed

    Just bought a new Maxtor 200GB, and I did mount it in a external case, the store didn't have firewire boxes so I'm using the USB2 one.
    I did copy an image of my internal hard drive to it to "clean" it, rebooting from the hard drive, BUT even though the system is seen on the hard drive it doesn't boot from it after selecting it and restart.
    Today I did try to instal a clean system on it and it doesn't allow it neither.
    Is it because of USB2 and I could solve it changing the box for a firewire one or is it because of a SATA disk and there's no solution? (or anyhthing else)

    No problem on "hello' and "thanks"
    I'm no hardware expert but it also looks like you'll need to use a SATA drive enclosure:
    http://www.satasite.com/external-3-5-sata-hard-drive-enclosure.htm
    -mj
    [email protected]

  • IMovie projects on external hard drive not visible

    Thanks for the help.  I recently received a free upgrade to iMovie 10 (I think that's what it's called) and now I can no longer view any of my existing projects or events that I had saved on an external hard drive that's connected via Thunderbolt.  Is there anything that you can advise me to do before I condemn the new iMovie any more than I already have!???  Thanks again!
    Chris

    I wish I could help. I found the same thing when I "upgraded" to the new version. When I launched iMovie 10, I allowed it to update my movie library and in the process it seems to have copied everything to my Mac's hard drive. I had all my events stored on an external drive and I don't want those files on my internal drive.
    Here's the best part: In case you have't figured it out yet, iMovie 10 will reset ALL of your iMovie '11 preferences, so when you decide to go back to using the old version (as I have) you'll have to go through every page of prefs and "fix" them.
    I may eventually try using the new version, but only after they've replaced most or all of the functionality of iMovie '11. This is almost exactly how things played out when Apple replaced iMovie HD back in 2009. It's like they have no beta testers at all.

  • External Hard Drive not allowing Macbook enough Privileges - HELP PLEASE

    Hi all,
    Im new to the Apple Notebooks, bought my Macbook pro yesterday.
    I need your help with moving pictures etc to my external hard drive which is a Buffalo DriveStation 2TB USB 2.0...
    I've tried a few online video's explaining the "Change your import storage to the External hard drive" etc and holding and dragging into my hard drive but no hope.
    My mac pops up with something like "OS X doesn't have enough privileges" also another note came up "Microsoft Software is not supported on the OS X"
    Any tips or should I look for a different hard drive?
    Any help with be much appreciated.
    Thanks
    Jo.

    The drive is probably formatted in the Windows NTFS format. you need to format it in the Mac format. Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with a partition table of GUID. You do that in Disk Utility.
    Go to the Utilities folder in the Applications folder and open Disk Utility. Select the top most entry for that external, it will have the drive model and size. Click the partition tab and then select one partition from the Partition Layout area drop down. Make the Format as stated above and then click the Options button and set that to GUID. lose the Option window and click the Apply button. All data on that drive will be erased so if you have Windows files on it that you want to keep save them to a Windows computer before you start this process.

  • Why does my external Hard Drive not save album artwork? Help!

    I have quite a lot of music saved digitally, so to save space I have been storing it on an external hard drive. Some of the music does not have any artwork attached (and does not download any when I select 'get album artwork').
    So, as an example, starting with the music on iTunes, I have manually added some artwork via the 'Get info' option.
    I then saved the music to my external hard drive.
    However, when I next transfer the same album back onto iTunes, none of the artwork has been saved.
    Why is this? And how can it be corrected?
    Thank you!

    Hi,
    thanks for the reply, limnos, But let me explain: I have about 80gb-100gb of music.
    I can't keep all of this on my computer (on iTunes) as it simply takes up too much space for the rest of my computer to run at a decent speed.
    I therefore use my hard drive as a kind of library, where i store my music and occasionally transfer some music onto iTunes to listen to, and then transfer it back whe I'm done. Do you see?
    I have done a bit more exploring and I think maybe I only have a problem with artwork 'disappearing' when it is albums that I have requested 'get album artwork'. i.e. the artwork downloads onto an album; then i copy the album onto my hard drive for storage; then when i want to play the album again and copy it back onto itunes, the artwork has been lost.
    Do you know why?

  • External Hard Drive not showing on desktop

    Hi,
    I'm using a macbook pro, 15", and have been using it with my external hard drive for the past 2 months.
    This afternoon, I was using the external, where i have all my music and photos stored, and it was working fine. I left the computer on sleep for about 2 hours (all programs that have stuff on the external I made sure to quit before), and when I got back the "icon" for the back up disk was slightly more "invisible" on my desktop and time machine informed me that the latest back up failed. When I tried to eject it (nothing on the disk was being used) it said it couldnt be ejected because the disk was in use.
    I tried to eject again, same thing, so I restarted the computer. When I restarted the computer the external harddrive icon did not show up on my desk top. I tried pulling it out and plugging it in a few times, the disk will start up, but not load onto my desk top.
    HELP!!!
    the external hard drive is a Western Digital "my Passport"
    Thank you!

    Danja.schluter wrote:
    if I repair the disk, will i lose everything on it?
    Running Disk Repair will not harm your data,  the idea is to repair  and make it functional again. 
    If successful I would make a back up of that data because you may be skating on thin ice.

  • External Hard Drive not mounting on Desktop

    Hello,
    I use a 250 gb Lacie external hard drive (firewire) for backup. For the past week, the external hard drive has mostly not been mounting on the desktop.
    I don't think it's a power issue, because after turning the unit on both the light indicating power turns on and I can hear the motor operating.
    As indicated on the Lacie web site, I went to disk utility in system preferences and repaired disk permissions for my Mac's hard drive volume. That doesn't seem to have made a difference.
    Does anyone have any other suggestions as to what I should do?
    Thank you,
    Manny

    Hi gavvx, and a warm welcome to the forums!
    Feel free to start a new topic of your own will get more individualized attention, and many more helpers!
    It can be hard to sometimes find where to start a New Topic, so here's the link...
    http://discussions.apple.com/post!default.jspa?forumID=758
    Did you try highlighting them, then the Mount button in Disk Utility?

  • External hard drives not appearing on Desktop

    I have three external hard drives, none of which are showing up on my Desktop. All three drives are mounted, and I can navigate to them through the sidebar in Finder windows, and the contents of the drives are all fine and intact. In Finder preferences under "Show these items on the desktop", "External disks" is ticked. I've tried unmounting the drives using Disk Utility, then mounting them again, but they still don't appear. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

    Create a new admin user account, log into it, setup Finder's prefs to show all HDs, and see if the issue persists.

  • Troubles with making iPod an external hard drive. Very frustrated. Please help..

    I need to make my iPod an external hard drive, and the “enable disk use” option does not appear for me. I've gone through all the settings, reverted back to 10.7 and gone through all of those settings too. I've watched a million ****ing tutorials and I still can't find it.  The reason I ask is because I want to switch to Winamp media player, which also has the ability to manage music on mobile devices (including iPod), but Winamp wont recognize my iPod unless it's an external hard drive. I'm going to go insane, if I can't get my music back for school work. Thanks for anyone that helps.
    - Lewis

    Here's another one:
    You need iOS 7.0 and Mac OS X 10.8.  I have an Ipod Touch 4. I tried to update iOS from 6.1.6 to 7.0. I got no error message, but I checked "software update" in the ipod settings. The iOS version is still 6.1.6 and it says that "my software is up to date".  So go figure!
    You need to install it on both your Mac and your iOS device.  The screenshot above is from: http://www.beyondf.com/airbridge/.  The page contains links to both the Mac and the iOS versions.

  • Major External Hard Drive Issues... Please Help!

    Hey Everyone,
    I own an Iomega Silver High Speed USB 2.0 Hard Drive 250 GB... I used to use it to store files for my old XP machine... and would now like to use it for my Macbook running 10.5.2 since my PC died.
    The problem I have:
    The drive does not mount on the desktop and when I go into Disk Utilities, it shows the drive as having 744.9 GB of space rather than 232.9 GB as it actually has.
    Furthermore, I cannot "Erase" or "Partition" the drive because I get the error "Resource Busy". However, when I plug the drive into a Macbook running Tiger and try to partition the drive, the blue progress bar at the bottom jumps to 1/4 done and then does not move at all.
    I have plugged the drive into a Windows XP machine and it cannot partition the drive properly either..
    Please help! You guys are my last hope since I called Iomega... who say it is clearly NOT a hardware issue and referred e to Apple Tech support who did not resolve the issue and had me on hold for 40 minutes...
    I beseech you, please help fix my hard drive... I don't need the data on it, I just need a hard drive that works as soon as possible...

    Hi! "However, when I plug the drive into a Macbook running Tiger and try to partition the drive, the blue progress bar at the bottom jumps to 1/4 done and then does not move at all." If the disk is damaged (which is is) then the format would likely take 12-24 hours to complete so if you interrupted it it could have damaged the disk. I have a new disk that I never could get partitioned and is damaged beyond repair. Ok try this restart the computer with the disk off. Then turn the disk on and see if it brings up the message that the disk is unreadable and takes you to the disk utility. Also sometimes changing usb ports or trying to format it on another computer works. Tom

Maybe you are looking for