Unviewable iMovie projects after moving them to external hard drive

I moved my imovie 09 projects to an external hard drive using the finder window, did not move them in imovie and now they are unviewable in imovie. Is there any way will be able to view them again in imovie??? I thought maybe they needed to be in the internal hard drive for some reason, so I tried to move them back to "Movies" in my internal HD, but it didn't work either. I read in some other forums that they would not have their path links copied over if I did the moving in finder. Please tell me there's a way to recover my projects!

Well, you have a couple options. First shut down iTunes. Then unmount your HD. Then mount your external HD again, then after it pops up on your desktop, launch iTunes. Any files iTunes has that points to your ext. HD should play just fine.
Or, you can copy all your music to your ext. HD (if you don't already have it there), and simply delete your iTunes library (by removing your data files). You could then add to library, making sure you uncheck "copy itunes songs to music folder). This way, iTunes will only "point" to your ext. drive to play the music. If the drive isn't on, you don't get any music, and the "!" sign. If you have many playlists, this can be tricky.
As a rule, I don't go crazy with playlists, other than smart playlists. This way, you don't go nuts when you lose your data file, or want to do a clean update of your library. You'd be surprised at the times I thought I kept my library in tip-top shape, only to delete it and add the music again. I often find a song or two that I had hidden somewhere.
Bryan

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Why can't I see my photos after moving them to external hard drive?

My imac hard drive ran out of available space, so I copied iPhoto and all file to an external hard drive and deleted the originals from my original hard drive. All files seemed to come over, but I can't open the photos or see the images. Is there anything I can do to resolve this situation? Thanks in advance for your feedback.

no idea what you did or if the EHD is properly formatted
the correct procedure is
Moving the iPhoto library is safe and simple - quit iPhoto and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity to the external drive - depress the option key and launch iPhoto using the "select library" option to point to the new location on the external drive - fully test it and then trash the old library on the internal drive (test one more time prior to emptying the trash)
And be sure that the External drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) (iPhoto does not work with drives with other formats) and that it is always available prior to launching iPhoto
And backup soon and often - having your iPhoto library on an external drive is not a backup and if you are using Time Machine you need to check and be sure that TM is backing up your external drive
LN

I want to move imovie projects and events to an external hard drive. Where is the "move" command?

I want to move completed imovie projects and events to my external hard drive. I see in the "help" section that I should "move project & event" and they indicate that their should be such a selection. I highlight the project I want to move and attempt to drag it to my external HD but it won't stay. I never see "move project & event". I've tried holding the "command" key down while dragging and that doesn't work either. Help ...

Hi
Moving Event's and Project's
Connection - Either connect one Mac in Target mode to the other via FireWire. Or use an external hard disk !
(Target-Mode - Start one Mac e.g. laptop - BUT keep T-key down during full up-start - Now a FW-symbol is jumping around the screen and it will work as an external hard disk when connected to the other Mac)
A. The External Hard Disk - MUST BE - Mac OS Extended (hfs) formatted to work for Video. UNIX/DOS/FAT32/Mac OS Exchange works for most other things but not for Video whatever program is used (iMovie or FinalCut)
B. Should be a FireWire one as USB/USB2 performs badly to me and especially when filling up
C. Do never Move or Alter any folder named
• iMovie Event's - or -
• iMovie Project's
on DeskTop/Finder - as this will result in iMovie losing connections to them and repair can be anything from hard to impossibly
D. Moving and Copying must be done within iMovie application and Events to Events - and - Project's to Project's.
E. Moving Project's to Event's - Do not work for me - I have to export project as a QuickTime movie then Import this into Events.
Event's window can show two faces
Like this
or like this
from one hard disk Event - You can move it to the other hard disk
You can not (at least not me) move Event to Project or other way around only
Event to Event and Project to Project
Yours Bengt W

How to get batch recognition of (!) on some tracks after moving library from external hard drive to new iMac (with terabyte hard drive)?

I'm using Lion 10.7.2 and iTunes 10.5.2
I have moved my iTunes music from an external hard drive onto my new iMac (with a terabyte hard drive) with music folder organized - when I try to play some tracks I get the iTunes can't locate warning and so I follow through and show iTunes the track - they are all in the music folder on my iMac hard drive - they all copied over and they all appear in the iTunes library list - so far as I can tell out of a 500 gigabyte music collection - but there are so many giving me the error - many other tracks function as they should too, some work others don't - So I'm looking for a way to get all the error tracks fixed in a batch correction way. Doing this individually with each track just isn't realistic.
Can anyone suggest how I might fix this issue?
Also, after I show iTunes the song location and it plays, I get a find files prompt that looks like it wants to find other files, but that just causes the process to jam and I have to force quit iTunes and then it doesn't remember what I last showed it next time I open iTunes.
Also I'm trying to avoid the use of the consolidate function because that would copy a whole other set of music - not in iTunes - that is in the process of being edited (audio hijack pro and fission tools being used to put vinyl and tapes to mp3) But all that other music just means the consolodate function across my whole computer would be too much.

Some details seem to be coming into focus - I have started scrolling through the main library list A to Z repairing tracks individually (there are thousands, but it's what works so far) - as I work through, it appears the problem occurred on tracks where album artist metadata was different than song artist metadata, predominantly. I'm not sure that is 100% the case in every instance, but that is what it's looking like. I don't why that happened, must be some technical glich I guess.
Also, I tried running Doug's Scripts - the one titled, iTunes Track CPR v1.3 - it is supposed to fix exactly the kind of issue I'm having - I bet it would work for some people with a similar issue - but for my case it only identifies the 'de-linked' tracks and doesn't repair them - that is at least helpful as I scroll though to fix them - I can see exactly which tracks have the issue quickly after running that script - but iTunes doesn't remember that warning symbol after a log-out, so it's only worth running the script on a set of tracks I intend to review and fix in any given session at a time.
If you are interested, Doug's free scripts can be found at
http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=itunestrackcpr
there are other interesting and useful iTunes scripts there too...
also, unrelated to the issue I'm having, I found a lot of really useful and time saving metadata fixing free scripts at - hubi's iTunes scripts - the page isn't English, but the script download is easy to find -
hubi's scripts work for batch selections of tracks - so if you import an album and find the metadata screwed up somehow, you can select the whole set of screwed up tags at once (even across a series of albums), run the easy to use script, and watch it all be fixed automatically while you sit back and relax...
http://hubionmac.com/wordpress/category/softwareschmiede/applescripting/itunes/
just for reference, here is a sampling of what hubi's scripts can do...
there are other useful scripts out there - the tough part can be finding the one that helps you...
01-(un)capitalizes
01-(un)capitalizes
This script changes.... THIS TEXT into This Text... or this text
01-Delete spaces
Sometimes invisible blanks are behind an artist name or album name...this script deletes these blanks behind or infront of the strings
01-Delete x first-last chars. of Title
A Name like "01--Ray Of Light" will be changed to "Ray Of Light" and the01 will be entered in the tracks tracknumber id3 field =)
01-fix combined Artist-Title
Sometimes Tracknames look like:
"Madonna---Ray of Light" and in the artist field you see something like"Ripped by Me"... this script puts Madonna back to the right field... all youhave to do is to enter the right delimiter ("---" in this case)
01-switch Artist<->Title...
Switch ID3 field a with ID3 field b (not only Artist with Title any more =)!
01-z_filename ->Title
Sets the ID3 field Title to the track's filename)
01-z_trackNr-Filename->ID3
When a track's filename look like "01-Madonna-Ray of Light.mp3" andyou don't have the track's tracknumber stored in the ID3 Tag... this Scriptcan do this for your =)

How do you restore your playlists on iTunes after moving data to external hard drive and the playlists are deleted?

after moving everything to an external hard drive, is there a way to restore the playlists you've already created if they're not there anymore?

If you moved the iTunes folder to your external drive, you moved the iTunes library file - iTunes Library.itl, which is in that folder.
You need to tell iTunes where it is, start iTunes with the shift key held down and iTunes should ask you to choose a library.

Artwork no longer shows up after moving media to external hard drive

I recently, and successfully, moved all my media over to a continuously connected external hard drive. Although my media folder and all music, movies, and apps are there, No NEW art work downloads when I buy a new movie or song. I've also noticed that, under the old iTnes folder there are still folders there for Album Artwork/Cache/Download. Should these also be moved over to the new drive or somehow linked in some way?

If you moved the iTunes folder to your external drive, you moved the iTunes library file - iTunes Library.itl, which is in that folder.
You need to tell iTunes where it is, start iTunes with the shift key held down and iTunes should ask you to choose a library.

Moving iMovie 09's library to an external hard drive...

Hi.
I have iMovie 09, but have followed this procedure: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1026 to move my events to and external hard drive. Couldn't find a similar article specific to iMovie 09... I assume they work the same way...
Well, this COPIED the events folder but left a copy still taking up space on my Mac hard drive. Can I just delete the events folder from my Mac safely? If the whole purpose is to save room on my Mac, why does this procedure "copy" instead of "transfer" the files?
I remember a similar procedure for iPhoto libraries, where you'd transfer the library file to an external hard drive then restart iPhoto (now with an empty library) holding Option or CTRL (can't remember) and a hidden menu asking you to point iPhoto to a library file would appear... Is there a way to do this for iMovie 09? even want my Projects to be on the external hard drive... and every time I import clips I want them to default to the external; hard drive iMovie "library"...

Thank you all for the tips.
Workflow that worked for me (might help others):
1. Make sure the little "hard drive" icon is active within iMovie (listing all hard drives where your events and projects are, on the left hand side). If you never had any events on the external hard drive you will see in the "tree" there but it will be empty.
2. COMMAND+Drag projects one by one from the upper left panel (where you see their thumbnails and information such as "Broadcasted to Youtube", etc... onto the external hard drive.
2.1 iMovie will ask you if you want to move related EVENTS to the external hard drive too so that the projects don't have missing data. DO THIS or the projects will be broken and you will need to redo them from scratch...
2.2 The step above will move both the projects AND the events they have clips from to the external hard drive to the newly created iMovie Projects and iMovie Events (these are created automatically by iMovie when you drag your events/projects to the external hard drive. You don't need to create those folders in advance. Try it with a small event/project and you will see what I am talking about.
3. Now that you moved all your projects+related events to the external hard drive you can:
a. move the remaining events that have no projects related to them to the external hard drive via Command+drag INDIVIDUALLY from the iMovie library itself OR
b. move all the events at once from Finder > Movies > iMovie Events >>> to the iMovie Events folder on your external hard drive's iMovie Events folder...
I did 3a. just to be safe... but as Sheryl or Appleman said here, it is probable safe to do 3b since there are no projects related to the remaining events that could be broken....
HTH...

How can I copy projects and events to an external hard drive from iMovie 10?

I have created a project in iMovie 10, which I would now like to share with a colleague, in a form in which he can edit just like I can. I do not see a way to copt projects and events to an external hard drive, the way I could from previous versions of iMovie. Any suggestions?

You can copy an iMovie 10 library to an external volume (HD, Thumb drive etc.) with the Finder so as to share it with a colleague. You may find the following link helpful:
http://help.apple.com/imovie/mac/10.0/#mov3fa25bae7
Before copying the library you have to make sure that all media is in the library. Media from iTunes, iPhoto and similar are by default linked to my iMovie and not copied to the library. To resolve this you may need to consolidate media before you copy the library. See for details:
http://help.apple.com/imovie/mac/10.0/#mov882dee351
Note that your colleague has to be using the same version of iMovie. Even different minor updates may cause problems.
I hope this helps.
Geoff.

Moving Content to External Hard Drive and Using New Computers

Before doing this, I want to make sure I know how to do all of it:
We are going to buy two new laptops, and retire the old one. I want to move all of my iTunes content from the old laptop to an external hard drive attached to an Airport Extreme. I then want to be able to share the content between the two computers. I know how to do this, and plan to move the library data base files to the external hard drive, as well.
However, I also want to be able to continue synching all of the content to the Apple TV. To what should the Apple TV be synched after the content is moved to the external hard-drive and the old computer is replaced by two new computers? How is that done under the circumstances? And, in the meantime, will the Apple TV lose all of its content and need to be re-synched entirely from scratch, or will it continue recognizing the current iTunes library as moved to the external hard drive?
Thanks!

This is an option, although as a note of caution; depending on how regularly you modify your library this could become a little bit of a chore. The option is likely a good one in many cases but not all.
In my own case I considered using an old mac as my media server in the sense mentioned by tmartine. (I do a bit of experimental stuff and need to restart my mac quite often, I also have 5 Apple tv's and a library which is too large to do anything but stream, my family don't take too kindly to my frequent restarts and I find myself waiting until the early hours).
However I also modify my itunes library on a daily basis, I buy quite a bit of stuff and also add my own movies regularly, as well as make several recordings a day through my eyetv, all this new content would need to be manually added to my (server) library (and deleted manually), I felt this would be too many extra things for me to do and so my personal preference is to have my itunes library on my main computer as the primary library.

IMovie Hangs on startup if my external hard drive is switched on.

Hi guys & girls,
I'm new here and also new to Macs in general so be gentle!
I bought my system back in April and have been running iMovie '08 quite happily, using my external hard drive to store the iMovie events. Anyway, within the last week iMovie started to hang whenever I start it up - it just sits there with no change, even after half an hour so I end up having to 'force quit' it.
I re-installed iMovie from my OS X disks and it didn't make any difference, however I've noticed that if I copy the event I want to use across to my internal hard drive then switch off my external drive before launching iMovie then it works OK.
The only thing I can can think of that I've changed recently is that I installed Skype and also a demo version of 'iStopmotion', which has since expired. Could these have caused this to happen or is it likely to be a co-incidence?
My external hard drive is a 300GB Lacie d2 Quadra, using a USB connection as I wanted to keep the firewire port free for my camcorder. I currently have 106GB available on the external hard drive.
-james

Welcome kultofkylie to the  iMovie boards..
+re-installing is a habitual ritual on inferior systems+ ..
stop doing that on Unix based OS' as MacOsX.. it can 'confuse' the file structure..
there are other procedures to give an app a 'slapp on backhead' ..
to clear the fog..
external harddrive is formatted to MacOs/hfs?
did Skype install any 'codecs'? have a look in your /Library/Quicktime folder.. what plug-isn are listed there...? e.g. older perian.org plug.ins keep iM from working correctly..
did you copy your Event via Finder or within iM08?
did you try to trash the .plist?
sorry for long list of Qs, but you did a lot, you shouldn't..

I have just updated to Final Cut Pro 10.1.4 - I have updated Projects and Events on my external hard drives (off the File menu). It's says under several project 'missing file' - but they were all there working fine before I updated.

I have just updated to Final Cut Pro 10.1.4 - I have updated Projects and Events on my external hard drives (off the File menu). It's says under several projects 'missing file' - but they were all there working fine before I updated. I am working off 2 external drives - not sure if that would make a difference.

After the update each seperate connected drive should now have a seperate Library.
The older Projects and Events folders would have to be at the top level of those drives go be seen and updated.
Were all the necessary Projects and Events in the corrrct place before updating?
Al

Time machine external hard drive requires repair every time I turned the computer off or after I ejected the external hard drive?

Time machine external hard drive requires repair every time I turned the computer off or after I ejected the external hard drive?

What kind of repair?

IMovie projects have broken link after I moved file on external hard drive

I have all my iMovie projects on an external hard drive, and it was working fine...until I accidentally broke the links by going into my external hard drive, creating a folder I named "Videos," and dumping the "iMovie Project" folder and the "iMovie Events" folder (which iMovie automatically created for me) into my new folder. I was just trying to consolidate everything into one folder, but that messed everything up. Once I realized what I had done, it would not let me press undo. Then I dragged the iMovie Project folder and the iMovie Events folder back onto the main part where they originally were, and that did not fix it.
Does anyone have any tips on getting my links back? I'd be so appreciative!! I have almost 200 projects of my kids that I can't access now. I have iMovie '11. Thanks so much.

The iMovie projects and iMovie Events folders have to be at the root (top) level of the drive they are on (or at the top level of the User/Movies folder), otherwise iMovie 9 won't see them.
As long as you have not changed the contents of these folders, if you put them back at a root location they should automatically appear in iMovie.
Geoff.

IMovie cannot find the video files (external hard drive) but they are in the project?

As the integrated hard drive on my iMac is getting too small, I moved all my iPhoto files to an external hard drive.
I made a movie after this change and it worked perfect until I should finish the movie. Here I get the message the the media files are missing.
This is strange as I can watch the movie in the project in the iMovie library.
I cannot finish the move nor share it.
Can somebody help me?
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Thanks!
Steen

Can you give me the info I wasked for in the other thread?

Why will my projects not move to an external hard drive within iMovie?

My movie list has grown so big I need to move them into an external hard drive. I searched on apple.com and found out the way this is best done. Firstly it states that it is done within iMovie, which is what I did. Secondly it states that you select a toggle button to display the various hard drives which are attached and again I did this and can see the hard drive I want to move the projects and events into. I then selected the projects and dragged then over the relevant hard drive, I can not seem to drag the event. However when I release the project to drop it into the hard drive it won't fall. It just returns back to it's starting position in the Project Library. I have tried to do this both with holding down the cmd button to move them or without the cmd button to copy them.
For some reason my files, either events or projects, won't move into the displayed hard drive. I am not sure if there is a bug in my iMovie8 or my hard drive is some how not configured properly. The hard drive was bought especially for a mac and runs Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
Can anyone suggest what is happening and how to get around this? In worst case is there a way to move the files outside of imovie that will still allow them to be properly displayed within imovie?

Hi
Can anyone suggest what is happening and how to get around this? In worst case is there a way to move the files outside of imovie that will still allow them to be properly displayed within imovie?
I don't think that it can be done that way - BUT I KNOW that it can be very destructive
most probably end up as un-reparable.
The move of projects and events - works so much better in iMovie'09
Yours Bengt W

Unviewable iMovie projects after moving them to external hard drive

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