Moving iMovie 09's library to an external hard drive...

enzofsilva wrote "When you select multiple events using command, let go of command and drag, the events are COpIED to the external drive and not MOVED. Leaving you with 2 copies of the events (local + external hard drive). I think the only way to do this is command + drag from within iMovie only individual events!"

Ok - I thought - this cannot be it. I have to move a WHOLE LOT of events to an external drive and I DON'T want to do this individually. So I tried a trick - and it DOES WORK. So all you (and I nearly) where ranting about is not true - haha.

1. Select multiple events using command
2. Click and hold the mouse to move the complete event selection
3. NOW (while you still hold the mouse) press command
4. Move the selection to the external drive and release the mouse.
5. It will MOVE all the files at once and says so in the dialog box.

Bingo

🙂

gfisch

oooh. silly me. God the little things.

No - not silly at all, Sheryl. Very helpful indeed. After all I knew the trick but I was not aware of the Command-drag logic. This is the power of a community and a forum - to find solutions on the point together. This thread definitely made my day and I am copying 40 GB of even data as we speak (and will go shopping now).

BTW - I just realized that you CANNOT select events (and move or copy them) across years. Lets say you have some events from 2009 and some from 2008 - you have to do the years (and all events in there) individually. But this is not really a big deal - but just in case someone would get as adventurous as I just got.

P.S. the same (strange? normal?) behavior (press command AFTER you made a selection) is true for other programs like Photoshop as well. Hmm - just that in Photoshop you would actually COPY and not move a selection - so it is something else - well.

gfisch

40 Gig's. I have terabytes worth:) If i moved that all at once, something would choke. I know it would. HD content is massive. I have three years worth of not very interesting HD videos of the kids. But at least they are cute! Yeah, sometimes i do something wrong with the command key, even when it is held down, sometimes it copies. Then I stop it and try again. I gotta be doing something wrong with the timing and not noticing. However, now I keep all my clips on the external drive and only bring the events i am organizing onto my hard drive for when i travel.

Then on the plane, I highlight my favorite sections and move it back when i get home. I have dedicated drives just for movies. I love imovie9 library function. It got me editing again.

Terabyte braging - haha. But I get your point.
Actually I just wonderd what would happen if you would
a) copy and not move
b) delete the original (now duplicate) events from within iMovie09 with cmd+backspace

would that not be the same and imovie would not get confused. I rather not try but move but maybe somebody HAS tried.

One more thing (and question) now that we have all the pros alert.
Let's say I want to keep my projects (with events coming from different HDs) all on my system drive. This would work - right? I am aware that I would not be able to edit but I would at least SEE the project.

I am a bit reluctant to move my current projects to the external drive as well. I am not sure what would be the best method.

And another thing.
Now that we have different events on different external drives and projects on either those drives and on the internal HD.

How in the world do we keep track of all that mess?
Unfortunately iMovie does NOT list events on unmounted drives just for reference.
Do I seriously copy the folder content in an excel file to get and overview or do I use YET (sigh) another program like CatDV http://www.squarebox.co.uk/professional.html (which a do have but not really use) or FootTrack http://foottrack.com/ (which I own too).

I hoped iMovie would be the central source for all my footage on external drives (5 TByte in total - haha - and it's not kids stuff (blush)) but it actually is not. Not mounted - out of view.

Any tips or ideas?

Thanks
gfisch

Interesting dilemma-5 terabytes huh...which is actually ten if you back up. I can't see anyway to keep track of unmounted events except in a log file. You can always mount and unmount when you are away from the mac.

I keep everything mounted. I'm not that concerned with my stuff. I plan on keeping all events by year on external drives and then labeling the drives. I am actually not sure what i am going to do with my projects. Right now, I have moved the projects to an external drive once completed. I share to all formats needed and even export. That way, if something gets broken at least i have the completed project in all file formats. I tend to not go back to projects. I just move on to another project.