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Cleaning up old movies without ruining projects in imovie

Hi I need some help. I have made many Imovieprojects with Imovie. I now have so much storage volume I want to get rid of the raw fragments I used for my final movieprojects. However, I noticed that once I remove a (raw) movie from my laptop to create storage space, I also damage my Imovieproject. (it shows an icon that a file is missing, it does this only with raw movies, not with raw .jpg's

I exported my projects as an mp4 to a file but that does not save the project either. That file will also be damaged once I delete a raw movie.

Does anyone know a solution?



MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.14

Posted on May 20, 2020 7:09 AM

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Posted on May 20, 2020 10:33 AM

You are welcome.


The project still works because the media that you imported into iMovie from your test folder was duplicated in the iMovie library. So you had two sets of media, one in the library and one in your test folder. When you deleted the media in your test folder you still had the same media in your iMovie library that to which your project could refer.


-- Rich

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May 20, 2020 10:33 AM in response to MariondeJ

You are welcome.


The project still works because the media that you imported into iMovie from your test folder was duplicated in the iMovie library. So you had two sets of media, one in the library and one in your test folder. When you deleted the media in your test folder you still had the same media in your iMovie library that to which your project could refer.


-- Rich

May 20, 2020 8:25 AM in response to MariondeJ

When you delete a clip (photos or video) from the iMovie Library's Original Media folder that will delete it from the iMovie system. The clip therefore will be deleted in all projects that are referencing it, but it will not be deleted from any movie files that had previously been shared out. No way to avoid that.


The solution to the file space issue is to move your iMovie Library to an external drive that has previously been formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Before moving the library, open iMovie and select the library's name in the side bar, and then do a File/Consolidate Library Media. That will insure that when you move the library it will carry with it all of the media that has been used in the projects. You can leave the iMovie app itself on your internal drive, so you can access and edit your projects. The iMovie app takes up very little space because the projects displayed in it contain only thumbnails that refer to the actual original media that is contained in the library. iMovie will now reference those files that are contained in the library that you moved to the external drive.


Note: reformatting a drive deletes all data on it. So if you need to reformat be sure first to back up elsewhere any data that you want to keep.


-- Rich


-- Rich

May 20, 2020 9:16 AM in response to Rich839

Dear Rich,


Thanks for your answer, it puzzled me so that I took another test.

I made a testfolder on an external harddrive which I normally use with my Macbook. I put 2 photo's and a small videoclip in it. Then I opened Imovie, started a new project selected the photo's and videoclip from this folder and saved the movie as a testmovie in the testfolder.

Next I removed all recources except the testmovie. It still works! And the file inside of Imovie also keeps working as long as I open another new project, so that the current project is given a name.

It makes me crazy why it didn't work earlier today. Anyway, Thanks for your help Rich!

Marion



Cleaning up old movies without ruining projects in imovie

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