Reducing imovie library size

Hello
Here is my Problem
I have an external hd with 500gb full with only imovie. It has been backed up with time machine to a larger hd together with my imac backup.
I have already deleted unused footage and now have only the minimum footage for watching old projects plus all footage from current projects. But I am still running out of room and would like to delete all the old projects so they are no longer in imovie. I Always make camera archives so if I ever need the original footage i have it.
What i would like to do.
I want export all the finished projects on to my computer. I have done some already but am not sure of the best way. Exporting full quality AIC format I am getting 1gb per minute of video, this is going to take up way to much space on my computer. I have tried to export to itunes in full quality, this gives better results on the file size, but I am worried if a put all my home video in itunes things will start getting slow.
How can I export my video without losing quality and not have the huge file sizes? and where is the best place to store it? itunes or just in files?
Hope I can get some help

i've heard people have been able
to reduce their library size to only 30% of the size
of their referenced files...
When the originals are high-res RAW files or TIFFs, sure.
Even with Previews turned off and deleted, Aperture still contains three or more* small thumbnails for each Version - the smaller ones are what you see in the browser pane and the 1024px one is what you see when laying out books, light tables and the detail pages for web galleries. These thumbnails take up ~400-600Kb each, so 1GB for 1300+ thumbnails (plus extra versions and masters) is about right.
Ian
*If you've made adjustments to an image then you end up with more thumbnails as you can still view the 'master' unadjusted image by hitting 'M'.

Similar Messages

Reducing Aperture Library size

Sorry if this has been dealt with before (I did a search and found nowt).
I'm fairly new to Aperture, and my Library has grown to 14GB (14,000 files). All files are referenced on an external drive (31GB of referenced files). I use a MacBook Air with SSD, so I start with 56GB after formatting. There were lots of duplicate photos (because I merged my iPhoto library with some offline archives I had). So, it was time to get rid of the dupes.
I deleted about 3,000 photos, but the library didn't get any smaller. I deleted all of the previews, but that only freed up 2GB. When I regenerated the previews, it went back to 14GB. After recovering from a prolonged bout of consternation, I searched the web. It appears that thumbnails are not deleted when photos are removed. This strikes me as a bug, or at the very least, poor design. So, I went in and removed all of the thumbnails as described here:
http://brettgrossphotography.com/2008/04/24/aperture-library-slimming-the-size
After regenerating thumbnails and previews, my library was down to 6GB!
My question is: how do people on this forum deal with this unnecessary library bloat? I typically only keep a few percent of the photos from each import, so my library volume will again outpace the actual number of photos.
One possible approach is to create a new Aperture library from a vault. Because my files are referenced, it should create a new library from scratch and then generate the thumbnails and previews. Has anyone tried that? Seems preferable to opening packages and manually deleting files.
-Rick

After a weekend of investigation, here's some more info on Aperture library size:
1) I deleted another 1,000 or so photos, updated the vault, moved the library and then restored from the vault. The library size went from 6GB up to 7GB!
2) Looking inside the old library and the restored one revealed:
a) AP.Thumbnails files in the restored library were generally twice the size of the ones in the old one.
b) Looking at the AP.Thumbnails files with File Juicer revealed that the restored library had created thumbnails of the master files as well as the versions. The original library had thumbnails for some master/version pairs, but nowhere near as many.
3) I then deleted all of the AP.* files in the restored library, and got Aperture to regenerate the thumbnails. This reduced the library size to 5GB. The AP.Thumbnails files were much smaller.
So, my conclusion is that the best way to trim your library is to go in and delete all of the AP.* files, then regenerate the thumbnails. Restoring from a vault is not as effective.
Anyone have any intuitions as to why Aperture generates thumbnails for master files when there is an edited version? I'm fairly new to Aperture and have yet to see Aperture display thumbnails of masters if there is an edited version.

What is the maximum iMovie library size?

what is the maximum iMovie library size?

My iMovie Event Library is about 4 TB, and no problems yet. I have hundreds of Events.
However, if a single event is too large, you can run into problems. Let's say you are filming football games. Put each game into a separate event. If you try to put all the games from a season into a single event, that would likely be too large to work properly.

Reduce imovie clip size

Hi All
Does anyone know of a way to reduce the actual size of an imovie clip?
Even when a clip is split or trimmed the actual size of the clip on the hard drive remains the same. I need to gain some space on my hard drive.
Thanks
nelly_boy

I don't want to waste my time with this sort of workaround.That is not a workaround. What you try to accomplish is outside the concept of the software.........
Edit App:
import clips
manipulate them
export finished project.
delete raw-footage/material on computer
start new project...
internal process:
keep import clean "as is"/no need for re-importing=convenience
write a list, what to do with clips (=project file)
no need to save an in-between version of the project's raw footage.
if you don't need, why do you import it?
if you delete it, what is neccessary if you need it later?
and:
to delete a few Mb, because "harddrive too small"... hey, get serious , we're talking of video processing....
any software has a fundemental concept.... ok, some guys use Powerpoint to do drawings, some use Excel for painting colorful boxes, and some use their stillcamera for doing movies.... it can be done, it isn't meant so.
one reason for me to switch from iM to FCE was the non-distructive editing process of FCE!... I'm a hobbiest, I like to re-do/undo things...
And I own 750Gb of harddrives............
as mentioned above: if you need this feature, downgrade.......

How best to reduce iPhoto Library size?

1. Can I delete big HD movie files from iPhoto (that were uploaded from camera) after I have run iMovie so they are now iMovie Events, without any subsequent impact (ie, deletion of) my iMovie Events?
2. How can I find out size of iPhoto Books to see if it's worth moving them (and all those photos) to a second Library on an external drive?
I have 100GB in 15K photos & 227 movies, but Finder says iPhoto Library is 134GB. That implies that the Book Projects are big and self-contained rather than pointers, but I think I read somewhere that if I just move photos from this Library to a second Library, it will "break" the books still left on the first Library?
A search found an old link to Old Toad's application note about duplicating/moving Libraries on web.mac.com but that's no longer available. Is there a new link?
Thanks.

1. Can I delete big HD movie files from iPhoto (that were uploaded from camera) after I have run iMovie so they are now iMovie Events, without any subsequent impact (ie, deletion of) my iMovie Events?
You really need to ask that on the iMovie forum. It's very possible that it just links to the material stored in iPhoto.
2. How can I find out size of iPhoto Books to see if it's worth moving them (and all those photos) to a second Library on an external drive?
Book projects are not large. They are entries in the database only. They take up negligible amounts of space.
There is no way to move a book from one Library to another.
I have 100GB in 15K photos & 227 movies, but Finder says iPhoto Library is 134GB.
The iPhoto Window reports the nominal size of a folder if you exported everything from iPhoto at the Current setting.
The Finder reports the size of the Library Installation. This includes: Original shots, Preview of Edited shots, thumbnails, database files, cache files and so on. All of these are required for iPhoto to work. There is no material in the Library that can be deleted.
If space is an issue you can run a Library from an external disk:
Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
1. Quit iPhoto
2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.
4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.
Regards
TD

How do you reduce a movie size in iMovie 10 to upload to youtube?

how do you reduce a movie size in iMovie 10 to upload to youtube?

Go to File>Share>File, choose the size (probably should choose either SD or Large) then click Next, give it a name, then click Save.
Go to iDVD. Go to File>Import>Video and select the file you just created. It will bring the video into your iDVD project.
This was always the way I did it in the previous version of iMovie. Works just fine.

Can aperture reduce my iPhoto library size?

Hi, I have spent hours reading lots of discussions and whilst, maype part of my questions have possibly been answered somewhere else, I cannot get a definitive answer to everything I need to know. I undrestand that aperture is different to iphoto, but I am confused by some of the answers regarding libraries that I have read! Any opinions or answers are gratefully received...
I have read that aperture organises the photo library differently to save space when compared to iPhoto that I understand makes duplicates for every change/edit that you make to a photo. My current photo library is nearly 120GB and I want to get some space back! I have external drives that I could move my iphoto library onto, but I want to keep my photos (well, certainly half of it) on the internal drive as I work away from plug sockets often and my 3TB drive needs power.
If I purchase aperture, do I import my library into aperture and will it then reduce my library down in size?
I know that iphoto and aperture can share a library, but can I split my library into photos onto my hard drive that I don't often need and keep the ones that I want on my internal drive? Would iphoto and aperture be able to work fully if the external hard drive wasn't connected? My thinking is that only aperture can cope with having multiple libraries on multiple drives to work with at the same time, and that iphoto needs one complete library on one drive
I am happy with many of the photos that I have edited from years past ie rotation, red-eye correction and can't see a reason for every wanting to revert to the original. Can I just export these as full size jpegs to my external drive and then delete them from iphoto to reduce the multiple versions of each photo it keeps, before re-importing them into iphoto which means it will only make retain 1 copy of the photo (the one that I need)?
Huge thanks for taking the time to read this!
Neil

I have read that aperture organises the photo library differently to save space when compared to iPhoto that I understand makes duplicates for every change/edit that you make to a photo.
It uses the same Library format as iPhoto, so no, it doesn't organise the library differently. It gives no thought to saving space. Digital photography with a non-destructive workflow uses a lot of space. iPhoto makes no duplicates. It has a preview of an edited version. One thing that Aperture can do is not generate the preview. But that means no integration with other apps, and you'll need to export the shot everytime you want to email or use an image in a document etc.
Frankly, I don't think that space would be a reason to migrate to Aperture.
My current photo library is nearly 120GB and I want to get some space back! I have external drives that I could move my iphoto library onto, but I want to keep my photos (well, certainly half of it) on the internal drive as I work away from plug sockets often and my 3TB drive needs power.
Split the Library. It's cheaper:
Make sure the external drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
1. Quit iPhoto
2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
Now you have two full versions of the Library.
3. On the Internal library, trash the Events you don't want there
Now you have a full copy of the Library on the External and a smaller subset on the Internal
Some Notes:
As a general rule: when deleting photos do them in batches of about 100 at a time. iPhoto can baulk at trashing large numbers at one go.
You can choose which Library to open: Hold down the option (or alt) key key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library'
You can keep the Library on the external updated with new imports using iPhoto Library Manager
If I purchase aperture, do I import my library into aperture and will it then reduce my library down in size?
No you just open it. It doesn't change it in any way without further intervention from you.
I know that iphoto and aperture can share a library, but can I split my library into photos onto my hard drive that I don't often need and keep the ones that I want on my internal drive? Would iphoto and aperture be able to work fully if the external hard drive wasn't connected? My thinking is that only aperture can cope with having multiple libraries on multiple drives to work with at the same time, and that iphoto needs one complete library on one drive
See above. I don't think you need Aperture. iPhoto can have the same number of Libraries as Aperture - i.e as many as you want.
I am happy with many of the photos that I have edited from years past ie rotation, red-eye correction and can't see a reason for every wanting to revert to the original. Can I just export these as full size jpegs to my external drive and then delete them from iphoto to reduce the multiple versions of each photo it keeps, before re-importing them into iphoto which means it will only make retain 1 copy of the photo (the one that I need)?
Yes you can, but you might want to ask yourself why you're using a non-destructive workflow at all, if you're going to that bother to try and defeat it?
IMHO: there are many excellent reasons for moving on from iPhoto to Aperture - and they are all to do with the limited nature of iPhoto's tools. You mention one of them. I think that the suggestion I have above is the way to go forward, with multiple libraries.

IMovie Reduce Exported Video Size

I am super new to iMovie. I am using iMovie 10. I added a video clip of size 90Mb in the iMovie. I did some slight editing like adding some text and an image. I exported it using the Share file option with the lowest SD quality option and the file size is more than 500Mb. I imported this 50Mb file in the iMovie again, did some editing and exported using the HD option 720p and now the exported file size is more than 1.1Gb.
I did some searching and realized that there was an option to export it as a QuickTime movie which gives many compression options. But looks like that option was in iMovie 9 and has been removed from iMovie 10.
Is there any way i can reduce the file size or is there any option to export the file size with minimum file size?? Thanks!

There are less options that there were in iMovie 9 but Share to file produces a Quicktime movie and you can choose the resolution. Obviously there is no sense in choosing a resolution higher than the original clips. Lower qualities produce smaller files. The other share target options are tailored to the target - the smallest movie is obtained by sharing to e-mail but of course the quality is very poor. For details see:
http://help.apple.com/imovie/mac/10.0/#move6e0cb2ad
Geoff.

Reducing image size to reduce library size

I have two macs and wanted to move all my high rez pix taking up a large ammount of space in iPhoto on my powerbook to my G5 tower. I dont have a problem moving the iPhoto library that's a breeze but my question is this. I want to retain all the pics in the library on my powerbook at a greatly reduced file soze to free up space. I want to use the powerbook as a reference copy and to show friends and family pics when they come round. I have over 1500 pics in the library at the moment. Is there a way of reducing their file size on mass as it were so that I wont have to do every single pic one by one?

jonnaf
The only way to do this is to select all the pic and go File -> Export, and use the options in the dialogue to resize the pics. Then empty out your library and import the reduced ones.
Regards
TD

Reducing Library Size

Hi all,
I've read through various threads here on the difficulty of reducing the iPhoto library size. Nevertheless, I shall have to do it soon, even though I'm already using an external hard drive.
Here are the basics:
--My library is currently 50Gb. My photos, though, are only 18.7Gb.
--I've deleted all duplicates, going from about 17,000 photos to about 9800.
--My library has remained exactly the same size.
--I have no iPod, nor, AFAIK, any iPod cache.
So, what gives? Would a rebuild of the library possible help out? I could do this following Apple's pointers or using iPhotoManager.
Thanks for any pointers,
Franz

Terrence et al.,
Thanks, this was fascinating. Looking through the Library, I found it did total up to the indicated 50Gb. But I also found out there were folders in both the Modified and Originals folders named "1939." I believe this is because one photo has the incorrect creation date of 1939. At any rate, in these folders were 9654 photos totaling 18.75Gb in the Originals folder, much less in the Modified folder.
I believe these are either the photos I attempted to delete or the photos I attempted to save. So, I did an experiment: I removed these folders, plus the 1939 folder in Data. I restarted iPhoto, but it had trouble.
For really stupid reasons we don't have to go into, I recently had to extract all my images, then delete thousands (maybe 9654?) of duplicates. All these photos, originals and duplicates were in one event, the results of the extraction. Two new photos are in a new event, so there are only two events in my Library. Everything in that first event has its correct name, but no thumbnail and iPhoto will not bring up an image for any of them. BUT, when I am scrolling down through the photos, they do display as long as my finger is selecting the scroll button. This is true in the Photos folder and also when viewing albums. The second event functions perfectly.
So, I think I'm going to either
1) try to rebuild the Library again, and see if iPhoto can reorganize its database.
or
2) put the 1939 folders back, delete the other folders, and see what happens.
Perhaps I'll try the second option (because it's faster) and report back.
Thanks,
Franz

How do I reduce the file size of my pictures

I am running out of space on my hard drive and notice that my iphoto library contains over 5000 pictures and is about 15GB. This is about 3MB per picture. I checked and lots are over 10MB. Most pictures I only print in 10x15, the largest i ever printed was A4 sized. I guess i don't need to keep such large files. These cameras are now set to make pictures with too many pixels I guess...
does anyone know of a way to reduce the size of all my picture files?
thanks
p

1. Reducing the file sizes of your pictures will not just reduce their quality when you print, it wll also negatively affect their quality no matter how you view them. Remember the screen quality on your next mac will be better than this one, and even more so on the one after.
2. The simplest solution to a size issue is to store the Library on an external disk, You can do this with iTunes and iMovie too.
3. If you really want to reduce the quality of your photos then there is no way to do that in iPhoto. Here's what you'd have to do:
Export the Pics from iPhoto (File -> Export) and in the Export dialogue make your choices on Jpeg Quality (the amount of compression used) and size (the dimensions)
Delete the pics from iPhoto
Import the ones who have exported back to iPhoto.
Give away your camera and get a lower quality one
Regards
TD

How do I find what is taking up all the space in my iMovie library?

If I find the my iMovie library in Finder, it's total size is a reported 15.59GB and, as far as I can tell, I cannot open it in Finder to see what files are taking up that space.
If I look at my iMovie library in iMovie, it apparently contains one event, which contains one movie.
If I select the move as then go to File -> Reveal in Finder, I can see all the folders and files associated with the event and they come to a grand total of 5.95 GB.
So, how do I find out what movies, clips or projects are taking up the other ~ 10GB in the iMovie library folder?
I'm using iMovie 10.0.5

When I did that, I could still only see the same contents as shown in the third screenshot above. However, minutes after doing the "Show package contents", iMovie seems to have figured out that it didn't have 15GB of data in its library after all and updated its size accordingly. So, problem solved for now but I still find iMovie to be painful to use and I will probably avoid doing so as much as I can.

A simple and free way of reducing PDF file size using Preview

Note: this is a copy and update of a 5 year old discussion in the Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard discussions which you can find here: https://discussions.apple.com/message/6109398#6109398
This is a simple and free solution I found to reduce the file size of PDFs in OS X, without the high cost and awful UI of Acrobat Pro, and with acceptable quality. I still use it every day, although I have Acrobat Pro as part of Adove Creative Cloud subscription.
Since quite a few people have found it useful and keep asking questions about the download location and destination of the filters, which have changed since 2007, I decided to write this update, and put it in this more current forum.
Here is how to install it:
Download the filters here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41548940/PDF%20compression%20filters%20%28Un zip%20and%20put%20in%20your%20Library%20folder%29.zip
Unzip the downloaded file and copy the filters in the appropriate location (see below).
Here is the appropriate location for the filters:
This assumes that your startup disk's name is "Macintosh HD". If it is different, just replace "Macintosh HD" with the name of your startup disk.
If you are running Lion or Mountain Lion (OS X 10.7.x or 10.8.x) then you should put the downloaded filters in "Macintosh HD/Library/PDF Services". This folder should already exist and contain files. Once you put the downloaded filters there, you should have for example one file with the following path:
"Macintosh HD/Library/PDF Services/Reduce to 150 dpi average quality - STANDARD COMPRESSION.qfilter"
If you are running an earlier vesion of OS X (10.6.x or earlier), then you should put the downloaded filters in "Macintosh HD/Library/Filters" and you should have for example one file with the following path:
"Macintosh HD/Library/Filters/Reduce to 150 dpi average quality - STANDARD COMPRESSION.qfilter"
Here is how to use it:
Open a PDF file using Apple's Preview app,
Choose Export (or Save As if you have on older version of Mac OS X) in the File menu,
Choose PDF as a format
In the "Quartz Filter" drop-down menu, choose a filter "Reduce to xxx dpi yyy quality"; "Reduce to 150 dpi average quality - STANDARD COMPRESSION" is a good trade-off between quality and file size
Here is how it works:
These are Quartz filters made with Apple Colorsinc Utility.
They do two things:
downsample images contained in a PDF to a target density such as 150 dpi,
enable JPEG compression for those images with a low or medium setting.
Which files does it work with?
It works with most PDF files. However:
It will generally work very well on unoptimized files such as scans made with the OS X scanning utility or PDFs produced via OS X printing dialog.
It will not further compress well-optimized (comrpessed) files and might create bigger files than the originals,
For some files it will create larger files than the originals. This can happen in particular when a PDF file contains other optomizations than image compression. There also seems to be a bug (reported to Apple) where in certain circumstances images in the target PDF are not JPEG compressed.
What to do if it does not work for a file (target PDF is too big or even larger than the original PDF)?
First,a good news: since you used a Save As or Export command, the original PDF is untouched.
You can try another filter for a smaller size at the expense of quality.
The year being 2013, it is now quite easy to send large files through the internet using Dropbox, yousendit.com, wetransfer.com etc. and you can use these services to send your original PDF file.
There are other ways of reducing the size of a PDF file, such as apps in the Mac App store, or online services such as the free and simple http://smallpdf.com
What else?
Feel free to use/distribute/package in any way you like.

Thanks ioscar.
The original link should be back online soon.
I believe this is a Dropbox error about the traffic generated by my Dropbox shared links.
I use Dropbox mainly for my business and I am pretty upset by this situation.
Since the filters themsemves are about 5KB, I doubt they are the cause for this Dropbox misbehavior!
Anyway, I submitted a support ticket to Dropbox, and hope everything will be back to normal very soon.
In the meantime, if you get the same error as ioscar when trying to download them, you can use the link in the blog posting he mentions.
This is out of topic, but for those interested, here is my understanding of what happened with Dropbox.
I did a few tests yesterday with large (up to 4GB) files and Dropbox shared links, trying to find the best way to send a 3 hour recording from French TV - French version of The Voice- to a friend's 5 year old son currently on vacation in Florida, and without access to French live or catch up TV services. One nice thing I found is that you can directly send the Dropbox download URL (the one from the Download button on the shared link page) to an AppleTV using AirFlick and it works well even for files with a large bitrate (except of course for the Dropbox maximum bandwidth per day limit!). Sadly, my Dropbox shared links were disabled before I could send anything to my friend.
I may have used a significant amount of bandwidth but nowhere near the 200GB/day limit of my Dropbox Pro account.
I see 2 possible reasons to Dropbox freaking out:
- My Dropbox Pro account is wronngly identified as a free account by Dropbox. Free Dropbox accounts have a 20GB/day limit, and it is possible that I reached this limit with my testing, I have a fast 200Mb/s internet access.
- Or Dropbox miscalculates used bandwidth, counting the total size of the file for every download begun, and I started a lot of downloads, and skipped to the end of the video a lot of times on my Apple TV.

Reducing MP4 File Size for online upload

I have a short HD video almost 1 GB in size (impossible to upload online). Is there an easy way to reduce the file size using IMovie or another program that I don't have to go out and buy?

I don't think you'll have too much success with this. Mpegs are already compressed files, so there's no real benefit to trying for further reduction. In some cases using compression software will make the resulting file larger than the original.
There are utilities that can be used to slice up a file into smaller parts that can then be reassembled. For example, Movie Cutter, SplitFuse, Split&Concat, MacAppStuff Pieces are a few. Look for them at VersionTracker or MacUpdate. Stuffit Deluxe is a commercial product that includes the ability to split and join multiple pieces of a file archive and has the benefit of being available on both Macs and PCs.
You can then split a large file into several smaller files to send via email or to upload to file server sites. Of course the recipient will need a compatible utility to join the pieces.

Reducing MP4 File Size

I have a short HD video almost 1 GB in size (impossible to upload online). Is there an easy way to reduce the file size using IMovie or another program that I don't have to go out and buy?

I don't think you'll have too much success with this. Mpegs are already compressed files, so there's no real benefit to trying for further reduction. In some cases using compression software will make the resulting file larger than the original.
There are utilities that can be used to slice up a file into smaller parts that can then be reassembled. For example, Movie Cutter, SplitFuse, Split&Concat, MacAppStuff Pieces are a few. Look for them at VersionTracker or MacUpdate. Stuffit Deluxe is a commercial product that includes the ability to split and join multiple pieces of a file archive and has the benefit of being available on both Macs and PCs.
You can then split a large file into several smaller files to send via email or to upload to file server sites. Of course the recipient will need a compatible utility to join the pieces.

Reducing imovie library size

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