How to import a clip from another Imovie movie ?

Hello Luc:
Go to these links:

Split Two
http://www.danslagle.com/mac/iMovie/usage/5003.shtml


Merge Two
http://www.danslagle.com/mac/iMovie/usage/5004.shtml

Sue

If it is just clips to combine,
find you project file(the one you want to transfer from),
hold "control" key mouse click on that file,
on pop menu click on "show package contents",
click on media folder and drag clips you wish from one movie project to the other.
OR
if it is a completed project
in MovieHd
click file_> Share
choose full quality and save to folder you can find the Quick Time movie later,
drageQuick Time movie over to your other project.
Warning making a QTime movie involve some computer time.
Z

The easiest way is to Copy and Paste the clip(s). iMovie HD offers Copying and Pasting of clips between projects.

Just select the clips you want to copy in Project A, Copy them, open Project B, move the playhead to where you want the clips, and Paste. Your clips will arrive as editable clips, just like they were in Project A. And since their Media files arrive with them, you can perform all the editing you could do in Project A.

To avoid unnecessary duplication of Media files, Copy and Paste all the clips at the same time.

Karl

You are welcome Luc!

Sue

Karl,
I followed this procedure, but when I got the clips imported I was expecting them to show up in the clips pane and not on the timeline, so I then closed the project in order to try again. I was of course watching the available disk space. When I opened the orginal project I noticed that the disk space consumed by the clips I imported had not been returned. I then found the following in the iMovie help text:

"Note: If you import video clips and then quit iMovie HD without saving your project, the clips are placed in the iMovie Trash. The next time you open the project you can retrieve the clips from the Trash or delete them permanently."

So I went back into the project that I had pasted the clips into and its trash showed 0 bytes. So my question is how do I recover 2GB of space from my mistake?

Alex Spencer - iMovie Novice

Well I found where those clips were trashed too. Its not the iMovie trash can as indicated by the help text! Its the user trash can. Here is how I found my clips in case this is useful for anyone else.

find . -name '*.dv' -exec ls -l {} \; | grep Trash
-rw-r--r-- 1 aspencer aspencer 105600000 11 Dec 10:53 ./.Trash/Clip 251 copy.dv
-rw-r--r-- 1 aspencer aspencer 105600000 11 Dec 10:45 ./.Trash/Clip 251.dv
-rw-r--r-- 1 aspencer aspencer 88560000 11 Dec 10:44 ./.Trash/Clip 252.dv
-rw-r--r-- 1 aspencer aspencer 91560000 11 Dec 10:45 ./.Trash/Clip 253.dv
-rw-r--r-- 1 aspencer aspencer 53760000 11 Dec 10:45 ./.Trash/Clip 254.dv
-rw-r--r-- 1 aspencer aspencer 61320000 11 Dec 10:45 ./.Trash/Clip 255.dv
-rw-r--r-- 1 aspencer aspencer 179640000 11 Dec 10:46 ./.Trash/Clip 256.dv
-rw-r--r-- 1 aspencer aspencer 197880000 11 Dec 10:47 ./.Trash/Clip 257.dv
-rw-r--r-- 1 aspencer aspencer 69960000 11 Dec 10:47 ./.Trash/Clip 258.dv
-rw-r--r-- 1 aspencer aspencer 48720000 11 Dec 10:47 ./.Trash/Clip 259.dv
-rw-r--r-- 1 aspencer aspencer 146280000 11 Dec 10:42 ./.Trash/Clip 260.dv
-rw-r--r-- 1 aspencer aspencer 45120000 11 Dec 10:42 ./.Trash/Clip 261.dv
-rw-r--r-- 1 aspencer aspencer 78000000 11 Dec 10:42 ./.Trash/Clip 262.dv
-rw-r--r-- 1 aspencer aspencer 66960000 11 Dec 10:43 ./.Trash/Clip 263.dv
-rw-r--r-- 1 aspencer aspencer 311280000 11 Dec 10:44 ./.Trash/Clip 264.dv
-rw-r--r-- 1 aspencer aspencer 104160000 11 Dec 10:44 ./.Trash/Clip 265.dv
-rw-r--r-- 1 aspencer aspencer 40200000 11 Dec 10:44 ./.Trash/Clip 266.dv

To see the total space taken up by these files I did:

find . -name '*.dv' -exec ls -l {} \; | grep Trash | awk 'BEGIN { space = 0}; { space += $5}; END { print "total space",space}'
total space 1794600000

So I just have to empty the main trash in order to recover from my first copy/paste effort to move clips from one project to another. BTW is there a way to copy them to the clips pane and not the timeline?

Alex Spencer

BTW is there a way to copy them to the clips pane and not the timeline?

I don't believe it's possible to Paste clips into the Clips pane. iMovie HD Pastes clips at the current playhead position. There nothing that keeps us, however, from moving the playhead to the end of the project, Pasting, then dragging the clips to the Clips pane.

(It makes sense iMovie does it this way because we normally want clips Copied together to be Pasted together. For example, when we copy both clips and transitions together. Pasting into the Clips pane wouldn't allow those clips to stick together.)

Your findings about the trash are interesting. Like earlier versions of iMovie, iMovie HD does Media file management all on its own, and sometimes it's a bit of a mystery. It will discard files the project no longer needs. When doing that, there are times it moves stuff from its own trash to the Finder trash. In the test I just ran, I Copied an imported image rendered by Ken Burns to a second project. When I Quit without saving, Movie HD moved the copied DV file to the Mac trash, but kept two versions of the image file in the iMovie trash so I could rescue them from the iMovie and re-build them.

Karl