using iMovie on External Hard drive

No, Karsten said that you can't install iMovie on an external drive. You can, however, create your project and then move it to your external.
Check this site out:

http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=676592&seqNum=4

"To store imported video on an external hard drive, simply create your project on the external drive. If you’ve already started the project and it’s on your internal drive, quit iMovie HD, copy the project to the external drive, then open that copy."

And this one:(Scroll down to "Project Library (and Events) on External Harddrive") It is Karsten's website.

http://karsten.schluter.googlepages.com/im08tricks

:-)Sue

.. the only place I can work on a project in iMovie is in the internal HD, is that true?

no.

iMovie needs 4 kinds of memory..

the app itself needs very little(=95.1MB on my Mac) disk space and should be installed on your internal drive..

the Projects need disk space.. here, it is recommended to keep that also on internal harddrive, allthough it is possible to delocate that too.. a Project allocates only few MBs ..

the Events - these are the 'harddrive eaters' .. 1h HiDef could be 40-60Gbs (giga..); iM08 allows you to store (and transfer) those 'beasts' to any hfs/'Mac' formatted drive, internally, externally, usb or firewire connected..

finally, while working on your Projects, iM makes use of socalled temp-files.. you never see them (=they are 'hidden', invsible for 'average' iM users), but also need some.. Gigs.. internally.
basicly, rule of thumb: keep allways 10-15 (some say 20) GBs free on your inetrnal HDD to keep apps and OS stable..

.. and #5 of memory is RAM-'space'.. but that .. too much detail..

totally confused or ...? 😉

janets wrote:
I have a correctly formated EH. Can I install iMovie on the EH ..

no good idea.. iLife apps should stay in the apps folder, top level of your internal HDD, otherwise you soon come into trouble with iPhoto, iTunes or with automatic updates for the app.

.. when I import a movie how do I get it to go to the EH?

when you connect your camera, you can select where the Event should be stored..

I'm not sure that you aren't misunderstanding the matter. Even if you could work with the application sitting on an external HDD, it would still use the memory in your computer to work on the files, your HDD has no such memory. You can of course import your source material to an external HDD and even create a project on an external HDD (a little more difficult) and export any finished movie to an external HDD, but imovie (and every application for that matter) will always use the memory in your computer. (Some pro editing applications do allow you to allocate a location for a scratch disk though).

Hope I didn't confuse you, I was merely trying to say you don't need to have imovie (the application) on an external disk to be able to have the events or the projects on an external disk. Moving events is quite easy, moving projects is a little more difficult, the link to Karstens pages above will tell you how to do both.

Karsten you wrote in your answer above

Karsten Schlüter wrote:
the Events - these are the 'harddrive eaters' .. 1h HiDef could be 40-60Gbs (giga..); iM08 allows you to store (and transfer) those 'beasts' to any hfs/'Mac' formatted drive, internally, externally, usb or firewire connected..

How about iM06HD?
I thougt that there once only firewire connected HDs could be used as an external storage for iMovie. But I don't remember if that was iM06 or iM08 or whatever.
I am still using iM06 (GeeThree effects) and sometimes iM08 and I have an ext firewire disk. But it's getting full and fuller - I will have to buy a new one very soon.

iMovieHD can use any type of external drives, USB or Firewire.

iMovie HD stores all the movie data within the project file, so they become quite large and you can't have a duplicate project without taking up much more space. But your project is computer / hardrive independent and you can move it around anywhere freely.

iMovie only references back to the Event folder for footage so you can have multiple versions of projects without duplicated footage, but then it is tied to your computer and not easy to change the storage location. You can move footage between drive within iMovie 08 but the project file is tied to your computer. (still photos and bg music will lose connection if you move project file to another computer, even if the footage is on an external drive and that drive is mounted on the new computer.)
iMovie 09 basically works the same way but you'll have the option of collecting footage per project for moving or copying to another computer or drive. I'm not sure about BG music and still image but I hope they'd collected as well.