Stopping iMovie HD from opening a project automatically

Question

Hello,
Is there a way to stop iMovie HD from automatically opening the last project worked on? I work at a college and am in charge of an editing station where I don't want students accidently removing someone's project.
-Matt

Answer 1

There's probably a better way to do this -- an 'official' way that relies on user permissions and such. But a 'quick and dirty' way is to lock the iMovie preference file. (In User/Library/Preferences folder, named 'com.apple.iMovie.plist'.)
iMovie HD saves the name of the most-recently opened project in that file. If the file is locked, the name isn't saved.
iMovie saves lots of other stuff there too, including the latest Ken Burns settings and all user-definable preferences. Saving them -- or not saving them -- may be good or bad, depending on the behavior you want. The user will be able to configure user settings for her current session, but the prefs won't be saved across multiple sessions.
Before locking the prefs file, it's important you configure the preferences you want as iMovie's default settings. Start by discarding the current prefs file -- while iMovie is NOT running. Then launch iMovie, create a new project (which you'll discard later), then set the user prefs to what you want. (The playback quality is important). Set any Ken Burns settings you want as the default and import an image. Save the project.
Now close the project window. The "what do you want to do now?" window will open. When you quit from this window, iMovie will save NO project as the recent project in the prefs file. Quit iMovie from this window.
In the Finder, locate the prefs file and lock it. Now the prefs you set will be the default for each user. Launching iMovie will open to the "what do you want to do now?" window.
Karl