Source clip missing

I have been working on an iMovie project over the past week. Everything was going well, when suddenly I could no longer play the clips. The Events Library in the left panel has an exclamation mark inside a yellow triangle; every clip in the project window has the same; and when I attempt the play the project, there is a message, "Source clip is missing" below a rectangle containing a white star.

I have not moved the source clips, and they are still playable in Quicktime.

I can't find anything in the Help file, or in these discussion forums about Source Clips.

Has anyone had a similar situation, or know how to get iMovie 09 to link to the source files? I thought about trashing the preference file for iMovie, but didn't want to do that unless I can't find an answer.

Another thought: Is there a limit on the length of a movie in iMovie? the movie I am working on is just over 2 hours long.

Intel iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Feb 16, 2009 7:49 AM

98 replies

Sep 3, 2012 3:33 PM in response to DDDy94

When i go to terminal and do that step and press return it tells me "not a directory"

i did everything i was supppose to. opened up terminal. typed CD put a space in between and dragged the project file to terminal pressed return then it tells me "not a directory"

Any thing else i can try?

Jan 3, 2013 8:16 PM in response to Jim2006

I did this, and now iMovie refuses to acknowledge that the project exists. I tried relaunching iMovie, and double clicking the project to open it but nothing works. Also, if I make a new project with the same name as the broken one, it adds a " 2" at the end of it, therefore it knows that the project is there. Please help as I am on a tight deadline and need to get this exported!

neph73

Level 1

0 points

Jan 15, 2013 2:41 PM in response to Bob McAdams

I followed Jim's instructions but the pathways were fine. Exactly the same yet my project is still bringing up source clip is missing. Can anyone help?

Enshalia

Level 1

0 points

Apr 6, 2013 10:38 AM in response to Jim2006

Thank you so much!! I moved all my files to an external hard drive BEFORE I realized you couldn't re-link them easily 🙂. I downloaded TextWrangler through the AppStore since I didn't want to pay for BBedit and it worked great! Since I am new to all this it took me a little bit to learn the lingo of what I was looking for but once I got that down, saved it first after only one text line change to make sure it worked (and it did!) then re-opened the document, did a command F to find all the rest and viola! I am now making my DVD WITHOUT re-doing the whole project! Thank you again!!!

EOINMCL

Level 1

0 points

Jun 23, 2013 7:00 AM in response to Bob McAdams

I've just found unexpected success by simply moving all the video files out of the imovie event folder (in Finder), then moving them back in again and allowing imovie to re-import them.

pdmus

Level 1

0 points

May 30, 2015 3:32 PM in response to DPaskin

DPaskin - Thanks so much, that worked great! Easy to do, also. I was thinking I was going to have to replace the .mov, retime, edit, etc. But thanks to your simple way of doing this, the .mov events are all back! THANK YOU, thank you!!! - Peter

ApeMaia

Level 1

0 points

Jun 20, 2015 6:26 AM in response to Bob McAdams

I solved the problem by renaming the location of the migrated files, as suggested in this useful tutorial, checking and/or editing the project work flow text with text wrangler.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6IQcZ0qh70

DrMaryCC

Level 1

8 points

Jul 8, 2015 2:33 PM in response to Jim2006

Thank you so much, Jim! I just changed the folder name back to the original folder name I had for it, and all is well.

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Source clip missing