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imovie - transition to new macbook

So, I have bought a new macbook pro, and cudnt backup my old mac into a time machine for technical reasons. Is there any way I could get the imovie projects (as its the same apple ID am using) and although I did put everything into cloud, it didnt show the projects when I transitioned to the new macbook.

pls help as my entire work is now stuck (and deleted on the old formatted macbook)



Mac Pro

Posted on Jun 15, 2020 9:17 PM

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Posted on Jun 16, 2020 7:44 AM

Your Apple I.D. will enable you to obtain updates of iMovie. The new MacBook Pro will already have iMovie installed and when you open it it will open in a new blank library. Your old projects, however, are stored in your old iMovie library. Check your new Mac's Movies folder (Go/Home/Movies) and see if your old iMovie library got carried over. If it did you can double click on it and iMovie will open in your old library with your projects intact.


Is there anything at all left on your old Mac's drive, or was everything deleted? If you still have your old iMovie library in the Movies folder of your old Mac you can copy it over to your new Mac and your projects will be intact. You want first to do a File/Consolidate Library Media to be sure that all of your media gets copied into your library. You mentioned something about your old work being deleted on your old Mac. If you deleted your iMovie library you would lose your projects unless you had the library backed up on an external drive. It wouldn't need to be a Time Machine backup, that you said you didn't have, but a back up on any external drive formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) would be fine. You could then copy it from there to your new Mac.


Your iMovie library wouldn't be transferred from the Cloud because iMovie libraries cannot be stored in the cloud.


-- Rich





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4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 16, 2020 7:44 AM in response to kalyani_apple

Your Apple I.D. will enable you to obtain updates of iMovie. The new MacBook Pro will already have iMovie installed and when you open it it will open in a new blank library. Your old projects, however, are stored in your old iMovie library. Check your new Mac's Movies folder (Go/Home/Movies) and see if your old iMovie library got carried over. If it did you can double click on it and iMovie will open in your old library with your projects intact.


Is there anything at all left on your old Mac's drive, or was everything deleted? If you still have your old iMovie library in the Movies folder of your old Mac you can copy it over to your new Mac and your projects will be intact. You want first to do a File/Consolidate Library Media to be sure that all of your media gets copied into your library. You mentioned something about your old work being deleted on your old Mac. If you deleted your iMovie library you would lose your projects unless you had the library backed up on an external drive. It wouldn't need to be a Time Machine backup, that you said you didn't have, but a back up on any external drive formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) would be fine. You could then copy it from there to your new Mac.


Your iMovie library wouldn't be transferred from the Cloud because iMovie libraries cannot be stored in the cloud.


-- Rich





Jun 20, 2020 5:52 AM in response to Rich839

hey Rich:

Thanks so much for your detailed reply.


I am unable to understand the following:


  1. Check your new Mac's Movies folder (Go/Home/Movies) - where is this folder ? I checked in the Movies folder on the new macbook (under finder). its completely empty except for the one project I created on the new device . nothing else...
  2. You want first to do a File/Consolidate Library Media to be sure that all of your media gets copied into your library.- how do I do this ?
  3. Is there anything at all left on your old Mac's drive, or was everything deleted? - I have traded in the old macbook for the new, so have no way to access old files


My old macbook contained my entire work of 18 Imovie WIP projects, so would be very grateful if you could advise if I could retrieve them in some other way (although that doesn't sound very plausible, sadly)


Look fwd to ur response,

Cheers!

Jun 20, 2020 8:31 AM in response to kalyani_apple

Hi,


Since you deleted everything from your old Mac and then traded it in, and didn't keep a backup of your iMovie library, I am afraid that at this point nothing can be done. You might have been able to use recovery software had you kept your old Mac, but that option is no longer available unless you can retrieve your old Mac.


You said that you couldn't back up your old Mac to Time Machine "for technical reasons"? Did you have an operating Time Machine backup at one point in time? If so, you could could go back to it and restore your old iMovie library to an earlier point in time and possibly recover some of your projects.


You actually did find your Movies folder and confirmed that your old library is not in it. Your question No. 2 is no longer applicable, but, for information purposes, you would click on your library name in the iMovie sidebar and then do a File/Consolidate Library Media.


Sorry that you lost your projects. That's a bummer for sure. Perhaps you can reconstruct some of them if you still have the original media stored somewhere. This is a hard learned lesson always to keep a back up of your data on a separate drive.


Best,


-- Rich





imovie - transition to new macbook

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