iMovie not deleting clips

Did you really delete clips? Or just PARTS of clips?

iMovie uses non-destructive editing. That means as long as you hold on to a tiny pice of the original clip, the entire original clip is kept. That way you can always revert to the original lenght.

Did you also empty Finder's trash. (I think iMovie puts the clips in Finder's trash, see the trashcan on the Dock.)

Having the same problem, as I've taken out portions of the clips, but parts remain in the clipboard. So it seems that you have to delete the entire clip in order to save disk space....that's kind of odd, I have 7 DV tapes to import in total of a friend's wedding and will not have enough disk space.....my question is then, if I get an external HD, do I copy the iMovie project onto it and will there be any associated files that need to copied as well? One other quick question, I used a Canon XL-1 to capture the video, and when importing it simply made one large clip instead of several clips where the camera was stopped or paused....a Mac salesperson told me that the XL-1 and many pro cams will do this.....please advise,

thanks

Personally, I really like iMovie being non-destructive editing, but here is my advice to you: after you are done editing a tape, export your timeline back onto a Mini DV tape, and then delete your entire iMovie and import your Mini DV tape into a new iMovie project.

Example:

you import 62 minutes (a Mini DV tape), and you edit it into a 15 timeline. Instead of your hard drive absorbing roughly 13GB, now it's only absorbing roughly 4GB after you delete your original project and create a new 15-minute project.

Hope this helps.

One quick question....your idea seems very useful, but I'm getting a 250 GB external HD to alleviate this issue....again, do I simply copy the iMovie file by dragging it to the external drive, or is there a more elegant approach.

Ha, there's no elegant approach that I know of. Either click and drag it onto the hard drive, or go to File-Save As and choose the hard drive as your destination for saving your project.