The imovie working file?

Hi everbody,
I have just started using i movie and I have noticed that I can't seem to save the working file with all the editing panels for sound, video effects etc. still visible.
Once I shared the finished file and exported as a movie, the working file was gone, never to be found again. I want to go back to the working file and make some adjustments, but can't find it anywhere in imovie.
Can anybody help me please?
Cheers
mjw

Thanks Appleman1958
Yes I am looking in the Project Library and it's not there. I must have inadvertantly deleted it somehow from the project library. When I first started putting the movie together I didn't know what I was doing, so I think I have deleted the working file and duplicated the finished movie and put it back in the project library.
It pays to actually read the manuals and find out something about the software befoore you start working with it.... chuckle!!
I get too impatient!
Thanks
mjwfromdownunder

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I saved an iMovie to DVD and now I can't find the original working files in iMovie Project library to make additional edits. What happened to the files? Thx!

I saved an iMovie to DVD and now I can't find the original working files in iMovie Project library to make additional edits. What happened to the files? Thx!

Did you do the moving of the image file in the Finder or do you have a reference library as asked by Larry? In either case moving the files is a recipe for disaster as you've found out. You must either move the files back to their original locations or try to get those photos back into iPhoto as follows:
1 - Find the folder you moved the files into and COPY it to the Desktop.
2 - in iPhoto delete the photos that you're having the problems with as you normally would even though you can't see see them. Also delete all the photos that are in the folder you moved the other files into.
3 - drag the folder on the Desktop into iPhoto to import them as one event. If you get a duplicate warning I'd let it import the duplicate and use Duplicate Annihilator to find them so you can cull out the duplicate you don't want.
Other than that you might have to start over from scratch as follows:
Creating a new library while preserving the Events from the original library.
1 - Move the existing library folder to the desktop
2 - Open the library package like this.
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4 - Drag the Originals folder from the iPhoto Library on the desktop into the open iPhoto window.
OT

Is there any meaning to the iMovie .mov file names?

I went into iMovie Events folder and looked at the a specific event folder.
A sample of the imported video file names are as follows -
clip-2007-12-01 14;51;04.mov
clip-2007-12-01 15;32;09.mov
clip-2007-12-01 17;00;33.mov
clip-2007-12-01 17;19;44.mov
How does iMac name the video files? Is there some kind of logic to the naming of the videos that I am not aware of?
The first file (clip-2007-12-01 14;51;04.mov) is a 2s video and the second (clip-2007-12-01 15;32;09.mov)is a 13s video.

How does iMac name the video files? Is there some kind of logic to the naming of the videos that I am not aware of?
To add a bit to what Winston has already said... Files imported via the "Import from Camera..." option are typically files captured from a camcorder or a device which iMovie '08 considers to be a camcorder. Thus the prefix "Clip-". Theoretically, the "2007-12-01 14;51;04" represents the date time group when the files was imported or the "time stamp" from the recording device which may or may bear any resemblance to a factual time. And as was previously pointed out, the ".mov" is a standard extension signifying the file container type. Therefore "clip-2007-12-01 14;51;04.mov" is a file clip imported or created on the 1st of December in 2007 at 2:51:04 PM and placed in an MOV (generic) file container.
With regard to the file container itself, this is determined by the method of import. Files imported at the "Finder" level are imported with their original "Finder" name and in the same file container as the original file. Camcorder files, on the other hand fall into two separate classes -- those requiring some sort of conversion and those that don't. An standard definition DV file is imported in its original DV container since it does not require any conversion. Files encapsulated in MPEG (like HDV, AVCHD, or MPEG-2), however, need to transformed to make them "edit" compatible with iMovie '08. At the very least, the audio is demuxed to "elementary" AIFF file(s) resampled to 48.0 KHz with 16-bit sampling and is now in a "temporal" compression format. In the case of HDV and AVCHD, the video is extracted/converted and can then be merged/synchronized with the audio and saved. This merging and saving of diverse content is what produces the MOV file container in the same manner as using the "Save As..." file command in QT Pro. HDD SD content however must undergo additional processing. Since the 'muxed" MPEG2/AC3 content does not share a common time reference, a "time" track is added to the container for audio time reference and to reduce/minimize drifting between audio and video tracks, the modified MPEG-2 video (now essentially having been turned into an Motion-JPEG video) is provided with an internal track start and/or end time offset and the whole saved in the generic MOV file container.

Where are the iMovie media files kept?

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Thanks,
Chris

Hi
Yes and NO
a. If You imported a say 10 minutes of movie and use 1 minute of this as a clip in TimeLine.
THERE IS ON Such clip at all. Only a reference note in Your movie project describing protocol
eg use this (10min clip) from frame 00:00:02:00 to frame 00:00:03:00 (=1min)
Ther is no such actual clip only the Non-tuched original import material
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[ctrl-click] on this once and a menu will fold out.
Here select "Show content of package"
Now You see a new window with a folder named "Media" and in this is Your imported material.
c. To just get the selected material You need to export this out as a full quality QuickTime movie
Then import this into a new movie project.
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of the full (prior) material now is absent.
Yours Bengt W

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Hi Lanny
install iM04 on your home computer :-/ (you can run both apps on one machine, but I recommend to install a second account for your daughter)
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Hi,
I am new into the Apple Community. I have a camcorder known as the JVC GZ-HD40 US and I currently am trying to use iMovie 2009 to edit my movies. With my camcorder, I have the choice to use two different video formats: AVCHD or Mpeg2. All my videos are shot in the AVCHD (HD) file format. This camcorder also has a 120 G Hard Drive built into it. When I plug in the camcorder through USB to my MacPro, the Hard Drive of the camcorder shows up as a icon on the desktop. Many of my video clips are at least thirty minutes in length, inside the camcorder. When I try to import in iMovie my video files, it only imports around ten minutes of the video and skips to the end of the clip. I would greatly prefer to use my MacPro desktop to edit movies instead of my Windows 7 computer which seems to work fine. Is there a solution to this problem? Would the new iMovie 2011 application solve this problem? I also have the Final Cut Express to work with, and also, can't get it to work. What should I try doing?

Hi all,
I have the exact same problem. I've just been to Thailand with my girlfriend, and we recorded a lot of stuff with my brand new Sony HD camcorder. And whenever the we ran out of camcorder memory we just emptied everything onto my HP laptop using the supplied Sony software, which produced m2ts files. When we got home, I realized that my Mac Pro/iMovie09 was not able to import this format. What a huge disappointment! Especially considering the fact that I just bought my mac back in March (my first mac ever) only for video editing and music composing (no problems with music composing, however!).
Well, I needed a solution, so last week I just bought the Voltaic HD converting software (35$), and it works great. No problems. Only thing is that my Mac Pro (quad intel core) had to work 24 hours a day for four straight days/nights in order to finish the converting job - resulting in 434 GB worth of mov-files. This is no problem as such, and the quality is great. BUT it seems rather stupid that this converting has to take place. If I use Sony Vegas on my PC, it works out of the box with my original m2ts-files. And I would really appreciate if Apple would implement a simple import function of m2ts-files in their software - one that would (if necessary) automatically convert the files to mov. Or even better: would work natively with the m2ts-files.
Best,

IMovie for Mac: "iMovie cannot open files in the "iMovie for iOS Project" format."

Question, asked professionally
When will iMovie for Mac be able to open iMovie for iOS projects?
Question, asked snarkily
Any reasonable expectation that we will ever be able to edit projects--created in iMovie on our fancy new expensive phones--in iMovie on our fancy new expensive laptops?
Specs
iPhone 6 Plus (contract-free, 128 GB)
iOS 8.1.2
iMovie for IOS 2.1.1
MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid-2014)
OS X Yosemite 10.10.1
iMovie for Mac 10.0.6
Error Messages
iMovie for Mac: "iMovie cannot open files in the "iMovie for iOS Project" format."
iMovie for iOS: "An error occurred during export."
Frustration
Manufacturer: Apple (a multibillion dollar company)
The year: 2015
Hours lost: Three Weeks
Total costs for both devices: $4,000
Background Details
I just wasted thousands of dollars on these two hardware devices by making the rookie mistake of assuming projects were compatible across iMovie applications. However, the exported .iMovieMobile project files are in an incompatible iMovie for iOS Project format that iMovie for Mac cannot import. So I am stuck with a 15 GB .iMovieMobile project file--for an hour-long+ video--that I created and I was editing on my iPhone for weeks that I can no longer edit on my iPhone due to an error, nor potentially rescue the lost hours on my Mac, the sole reason I purchased it one day ago. The reason I can no longer edit the project on the iPhone is because iMovie for iOS suddenly stopped displaying the video of the project in preview, external display, etc. The clip snapshots remain visible and the audio remains audible, but the video appears fully black. Any attempt to export the video at any resolution generates an error message. (This error applies only to this project; other projects export without issue.) I can save to and from iTunes or iCloud without issue, but import into iMovie for Mac is unavailable for this latest version. Deleting and reinstalling the app does not resolve the issue. Nothing has resolved this issue; so I purchased the Mac as a last attempt, and it appears that I will have to begin the meticulously painful process of recreating the video from scratch with all the titling, sound effects, precise edits, transitions, organization, etc. This video was to surprise my mother for her birthday with "this is your life" footage, including my late father. It may seem like a small first-world problem, but such things carry big emotional impacts. What began as such a wonderfully intuitive and joyful experience has descended into a soul-suffering nightmare of catastrophic proportions. This software grinch stole christmas.
Likely Suspect
I believe this originated from Apple's confusingly designed iTunes client that removed videos used by iMovie for IOS during a sync, which I successfully restored back to the iPhone. This apparently resulted in iOS seeking and then claiming to find all of the videos, but somehow a bug in the coding causes the audio to play but not display video, and no way to resolve the bug from an enduser standpoint. I was hoping that iMovie for Mac would allow me a workaround, but I'll never know because the iOS and Mac formats are currently and dishearteningly incompatible.
Suggestions
I never performed a full backup of the iPhone, but I don't believe any of the iCloud nor local backups actually backup iMovie projects themselves anyway. (That's a fail.) So one must back them up manually to iTunes or iCloud.
MANUALLY BACKUP YOUR PROJECTS DAILY, IF NOT HOURLY.
MANUALLY BACKUP YOUR PROJECTS BEFORE IMPORTING OR SYNCING FROM ITUNES.
MANUALLY BACKUP YOUR PROJECTS BEFORE IMPORTING VIDEO CREATED OUTSIDE OF YOUR IOS DEVICE.
Resolutions
Hope Apple fixes this problem soon? Perhaps.
Return the Mac to Apple, if they allow? Perhaps.
Someone in this community will provide a magical workaround--that I haven't already attempted? Perhaps.
As unlikely these options may be, I shudder to imagine that I may be forced to suffer no resolution and $3,000+ completely down the drain, because if iMovie for IOS worked as intended, I wouldn't have ever purchased the Mac as a last ditch effort to rescue the project. It meant that much to me to surprise my mother by attempting to retrieve this project file from oblivion--but to no avail.

I appreciate you taking the time to copy and paste boilerplate responses to increase your points in this forum, but I've already read all those support articles in depth; but you have barely read my post at all. Please don't guess a fix. Only someone with the latest versions of iMovie, iOS, iPhone, Yosemite, and MacBook Pro is qualified to troubleshoot this, because anyone would immediately see that the following option no longer exists:
Open iMovie on your Mac, and choose File > Import > iMovie for iOS Project.
Read my post before you reply: It clearly says in the title and within my post that I can neither export nor import through iTunes without receiving an error message. So your response neither solved my question nor helped me whatsoever.

The imovie working file?

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