Yes, he could do those things, but Apple should do a better job of not making things harder than it should be. This could be solved by justing putting in a manual 'save" option. Apple is supposed to be a better computer than the PC..and more technologically advanced.
No. You are wrong, it does not always auto save, as many have expressed in this forum..and also I have seen other websites discussing this same issue. I have done everything correctly with closing out iMovie properly. I have made changes to an original project, uploaded it from iMovie to youtube, closed out iMovie and came back to iMovie the next day...all changes made to the iMovie project the day before were gone. The project I uploaded to youtube had all the correct changes. So, Mac dropped the ball on this one by not adding a save feature. The auto save is faulty from what I have experienced and from what others have experienced. Apple has a reputation of being a "better'' standard in computers....this mistake is challenging it. The purpose is to not only make things "easier" for the customer, but also make thing more "user friendly", which sometimes mean allowing the customer to have total control of what they want to save.
My thanks for the person who posted the temporary fix, but I wanted to add my protests about this. My dad's just learning how to work iMovie and he's justly infuriated that all of his hard work adding titles and transitions has disappeared every time he re-opens iMovie. It's clearly a permissions issue - hence the quick fix's working temporarily. This is ridiculous though. How did Apple miss this? And why on earth haven't they fixed it yet?
I think I figured this one out. I was having the same problem with IMovie not auto-saving my projects. It ended up that IMovie was not in the applications folder. It was listed on my Macintosh hard drive, and would launch just fine from the dock, but it was not in the applications folder. Simply dragging it in there fixed the problem.
In addition to making sure IMovie is in the applications folder, make sure to delete the old dock shortcut and replace it with a new dock shortcut that points to the applications folder instead of the old location, and then make sure you have the latest IMovie update.
To fullshred, when you install iLife it automatically puts iMovie in the applications folder and updates the Dock's shortcut icon, I've never had to rectify installation problems.
Regarding the "iMovie '09 not saving problem"... I am experiencing the same issue in iMovie (i.e. doing work on a project and then closing it properly, but when opening it again the project is "empty") and actually found that iMovie does in fact save your changes to the project file in the "iMovie Projects" folder, as the file increases in size when you add effects, etc.
The problem is when you close and re-open iMovie that it is unable to read the project file again.
I tried creating a new project on my external Mac-formatted HDD, and iMovie seemed to be saving and remembering it. Tested it by adding effects every time I opened it, and then closed it again so that it could save.