Cleaning up old movies without ruining projects in imovie

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

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