Using Clipmate to copy and paste between projects

Question

Thanks to Robert Johnston for the inspiration (and perspiration) for this method for copying and pasting between PE projects. One residual side effect of the method is that the audio and video of the copied clips will be unlinked. The renaming folders business is a workaround to avoid the silent audio problem after a project has been saved and reloaded.
1. Rename the folders of all audio files (including AVI files) used in the project to be copied.
2. Start PE and load in the project to be copied.
3. When asked, tell PE where the missing files are. (Check the box marked "Display Only Exact Name Matches".) Press Select.
4. Highlight parts (or all) of the project to be copied, in the timeline.
5. Copy the highlighted parts.
6. Copy into Clipmate:
6.1 Edit > Capture Special
6.2 Check both items in the list
6.3 OK
7. Close PE without saving.
8. Rename the folders of the audio files back again.
9. Open destination project in PE.
10. Re-select the copied info in Clipmate (closing the project in PE caused the clipboard to be cleared):
10.1 Select anything in the Clipmate list except the wanted item.
10.2 Select the wanted item (selecting an item loads it onto the clipboard).
11. Position the CTI to the wanted insertion point.
12. Do Edit > Paste Insert.
13. The pasted items will be highlighted in Media Panel. While still highlighted, select the Media Panel and do: Edit > Locate Media.
14. Tell PE where the files are.
15. Save project.

Answer 1

When combining projects, it is best to do your pruning of unwanted clips and other resources BEFORE you combine them, because once the Media Panel gets heavily loaded, PE is liable to crash.
Deleting the unused resources in Media Panel is quite easy in PE3 and PE4. Simply click on the "used" column heading, and the resources will be sorted into two groups of used and unused. Just click on the resource at one end of the unused range and shift click on the resource at the other end to select the whole range, then press delete. (Note that shift works normally in this panel, unlike in the timeline!) However, it is not strictly necessary to delete unused resources before copying and pasting because only resources selected on the timeline will be copied. PE will load and save a lot quicker if unwanted resources are deleted.
My feeling is that PE4 is somewhat more unstable than PE3, but I haven't done a proper direct comparison. For some reason after a crash the autosave often doesn't seem to have done its job properly, even though I set it to save every 10 mins. So make use of the Save button Adobe gave back to us in PE4 and save often, particularly before you use the titler or fiddle with the Media Panel.