200 Hours of Work Lost

Equus,

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but....

First, try repairing the volume with Disk Utility. I doubt it will do much good, but give it a try. Disk Warrior may have better luck, but I still doubt that it will return the project files to a usable state, even if it is able to repair the disk directory completely.

Don't just trash the files, though. If you were using DV footage, I don't think re-importing will cause any loss of quality; all you'd be doing is moving the footage into a new project, not doing any conversion. Once you have as much of your time-line as you can get, you can try importing the smaller bits. Make good backups and proceed with caution and forethought.

Scott

But would putting that back into iMovie cause it to lose quality

There will be no loss of quality when you import the movie to a new project.

That movie is a special kind of QT movie called a reference movie, with no real data of its own, just pointers to files in the Media folder. It plays the files stored in the Media folder. (You'll notice the movie is very, very small, yet it can play the entire project.) So you cannot delete the Media folder before importing the movie to a new project.

The import will require the same amount of disk space as the current project's Timeline clips require. So you will need lots of disk space.

The advantage to importing the movie is that it delivers everything you need to the new project. Everything will arrive as a single clip, but everything will play in the proper order.

Might be a good time to buy that second large external drive you've wanted for backups of important projects.

Karl

Karl,

these reference movies I know from iMovie 4. The new version 5 stores everything in one data file. Does this file contain a reference movie?

T.

If you're serious enough about editing video to put 200 hours into a project, then it's time to leave iMovie behind and get into Final Cut Express. I lost a big project like yours in iMovie, after having many other problems with iMovie, and for me it was the last straw. People here gave me the same advice I'm now giving you, and it was the best advice I ever had: abandon iMovie and move to a better editing program. As far as I'm concerned iMovie is for little projects like birthday parties and the occasional short wedding video, not projects that you invest hundreds of hours in. And Final Cut is so much more capable that once you master it you'll wonder how you ever got anything done in iMovie.

What I did was buy Final Cut and import all the media files from my broken iMovie into it, and rebuild the project using Final Cut's marvellous tools. I ended up with an immesurably better video, and learned Final Cut at the same time. All my subsequent video projects have been in Final Cut and are so much better than they would have been in iMovie that I've never looked back.

And the investment in an APS battery backup for all your equipment is well repaid by preventing just one such occurrence as the power outage you experienced to your hard drive. I live out in the country where the power is not as reliable as in a city, and I don't know how many times the power has gone out and left my computer and all its peripherals running serenely and smoothly in a darkened house, while the APS battery backup chirps, calling me to come and shut everything down normally within a half hour or so. I have the computer and all its peripherals plugged into an APS Back-UPS Pro 1100 that I bought for around $125 at Sam's Club. The many hours of editing work and sweat that such a backup protects and preserves is worth much more than that to me. What's your time and effort worth to you?

Tom

Yes, iMovie HD has a reference movie. Two, actually.

The iMovie HD project file is a thinly-disguised folder, called a package. Control-click on the file icon and choose "Show Package Contents". There's a reference movie inside the Cache folder and another inside the Shared Movies>iDVD folder.

Karl

I must agree with Tom on this one, We stopped using iMovie about a year ago, we only use iMovie for the layout editing. I found a program called HyperEngine AV by Arboretum ( http://www.arboretum.com/index.html ), I thought great we won't be restricted to just 1 video & 2 audio tracks because it doesn't have any!!, you have a blank canvas just drag and drop your video where ever you want it, Automatic transitions plus sound restoration & processing effects (at an extra cost). So we set about editing our 75 minute film in HyperEngine, It took us 4 months to get 60 minutes down.

Then we came across a problem, I needed to export it to show a friend what we had done so far BUT the program kept crashing when I tried exporting it, There was no way I could get the film out of the program, So I kept calm, went onto the Apple store and bought Final Cut Express HD £199, I told my friend that we would have to star again from scratch & that I would need a week to get used to the way FCE works because this is the same way the Pro's work.

Well after an hour of using FCE I picked up my friend and said "Lets Edit" I knew enough to get us going and within 5 days we edited All the film back together we are now laying down the sound track.

Final cut Express HD, Soundtrack & LiveType all for £199, Bargain.

Adrian

You may be interested to see what I did with HyperEngine AV using some stills and the automatic cross fade.

http://dotmac.info/pages/16857

Question for Tom and Adrian:

Equus' problem was caused by losing power to the external FireWire drive. FireWire drives don't handle that well, especially if a drive is being written to when the failure occurs.

Are you saying that If Equus had been using Final Cut Express or Final Cut Pro, this problem would not have occurred?

Karl

If you're serious enough about editing video to put 200 hours into a project, then it's time to leave iMovie behind and get into Final Cut Express.

And I gotta agree with Tom- If you're serious enough to put 200 hours in a project, spend some money on additional hard drives for backup (that are not always powered on) and buy a UPS.....I bought an APC 1500 for my G5, and my external drives too....

John

I spent around 4-5 hours a night for a week, only a couple of weeks ago learning final cut pro. I cannot say very much against it, it is certainly a very professional app capable of some really good stuff.

BUT

I realised that I simply didn't need the things that FCP did for me, Although I make lot's of movies (so far about 250 hrs of finished movies), they are all home movies and simply don't warrant FCP. I'm now back with IM, I do use FCP now and again, maybe where I could use more than one video track, but I only edit the bits I need and ship it back into IM.

I too have spent many hours on a single project, but as a rule generally break down large projects into a couple of projects and join 'em all up at the end. I have noticed IM is not too happy when you have say 600 clips, 200 transitions and 450 extracted audio clips

Are you saying that If Equus had been using Final Cut Express or Final Cut Pro, this problem would not have occurred?

Er.... No! We do seen to have strayed from what his problem was caused by.

Karl are you still writing that software to fix broken iMovie files?

Adrian

Thanks a lot! Didn't try it out.