Much of my disk drive storage seems to be in iMovie files. However, the ilibrary file in the movies folder is small. Most of the content is in the system folder; containers subfolder. I deleted a number of projects, but the container still shows 125 GB of storage. Running out of disk space.
MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.15
The Movies folder is the default place where your iMovie Library would be stored. Try going to Go > Home > Movies and you should see your iMovie library there. If it's not there, then for some reason it is located in the Movies folder in the Library Containers Movies folder. The other library that you saw with only
Your iMovie library contains 124.66 GB of data. So pretty large. The other library that you saw with only 156 Kb in it is some extraneous blank library that got created when you either deleted preferences or updated.
As I mentioned in my previous post, deleting projects from the iMovie app will not remove significant space from your drive, unless you go one step further and delete the Event in the sidebar bearing the project's name, that contains all of the project media. You need to delete the event, not just the media in the event. That will remove the project and all the media that it contains from the iMovie library, and free up corresponding space. However, deleting media from the iMovie library will disable any projects that might be referring to that media. Also, unless you have the media stored somewhere else, such as a Finder folder, deleting it would cause you permanently to lose your media.
The solution to the space problem is to purchase an external drive, format it Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or APFS, and then Copy-Paste your library's icon in the Movies folder into the external drive. Before doing that, select the Library's name in the iMovie app media sidebar and do a File > Consolidate Library Meda. After copying the library to the external drive, verify that it is working properly. Then, if you want, delete the library from your original drive to free up space.
-- Rich
The Movies folder is the default place where your iMovie Library would be stored. Try going to Go > Home > Movies and you should see your iMovie library there. If it's not there, then for some reason it is located in the Movies folder in the Library Containers Movies folder. The other library that you saw with only
Your iMovie library contains 124.66 GB of data. So pretty large. The other library that you saw with only 156 Kb in it is some extraneous blank library that got created when you either deleted preferences or updated.
As I mentioned in my previous post, deleting projects from the iMovie app will not remove significant space from your drive, unless you go one step further and delete the Event in the sidebar bearing the project's name, that contains all of the project media. You need to delete the event, not just the media in the event. That will remove the project and all the media that it contains from the iMovie library, and free up corresponding space. However, deleting media from the iMovie library will disable any projects that might be referring to that media. Also, unless you have the media stored somewhere else, such as a Finder folder, deleting it would cause you permanently to lose your media.
The solution to the space problem is to purchase an external drive, format it Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or APFS, and then Copy-Paste your library's icon in the Movies folder into the external drive. Before doing that, select the Library's name in the iMovie app media sidebar and do a File > Consolidate Library Meda. After copying the library to the external drive, verify that it is working properly. Then, if you want, delete the library from your original drive to free up space.
-- Rich
The "Movies" that may be shown in Apple Logo/About this Mac/Storage may refer in part to independent movies in the Theater library and independent movies that are stored on your drive, as well as the media stored in the iMovie Library. I am not aware of any media stored in the Library Container folders that I have seen.
Can you provide more details? What is the exact file path to the Containers folder? What steps did you take to delete the projects? What are you looking at to determine that "much of my disk drive storage seems to be in iMovie files"? Do you have more than one iMovie library? Do you have a theater library and, if so, what size? Do you have independent movies stored on your disk, and if so, what are their cumulative size?
All of the projects and media that take up space on your computer are located in the iMovie Library itself, in the Original Media folders for each project or event. Projects shown in the iMovie app consume very little space because they only contain tiny sized editing thumbnails that refer to the original media in the iMovie library. So deleting the projects themselves will not remove significant space from your drive, unless you go one step further and delete the Event that contains all of the project media.
-- Rich
Hi Rich - Thank you for the quick response. Of my 500 GB drive, 125 GB is found in a folder at library/containers/com.apple.iMovieapp/data. There are three folders in the data folder - documents, library and Movies. The movies folder contains a file: iMovieLibrary.imovielibrary which contains 124.66 GB.
I deleted many projects from the iMovie app, i.e. from within iMovie, but this didn't free up much space. In my movies folder the file - users/movies/iMovie Library.imovielibrary is only 156 kb and hasn't been modified since 2014. So, it looks like the file in the containers/data folder is where all of the movie data is stored, but not sure how it got there and more importantly what happens if I move or delete it (not planning on deleting it!) Thanks for any insight you can provide.
Bruce
Thank you! Your response was thorough and solved this problem for me.
You are very welcome. 😊
-- Rich
iMovie disk space
