Movie library on external hard drive
How long can it take to open a large 1TB Movie library from an external drive the first time. It’s been trying now fir 12 hours! Thanks.
MacBook Pro (2020 and later)
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None of my iMovie libraries exceed 64GB, and they open within a few seconds. 1 TB is quite huge and could well take quite a lot longer to open. I've never tried opening a library that large so can't speak from experience. Actually, a library that large is not advisable. Not only will performance be sluggish, but it would be more subject to corruption, crashing, and other malfunctions. If it corrupts, you will lose all of your projects and possibly your media, unless you had a backup. Every year I create a new library and label them Year 2019, Year 2020, Year 2021, and so on. I never let them grow larger than 60GB.
The external drive that houses your iMovie library should be formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or APFS. Check to make sure that yours is correctly formatted. If you need to reformat, be aware that reformatting will erase all data on the drive, so be sure first to backup up all data that you want to keep, including the library that is presently stored on it.
The speed of your computer might affect the time it takes to open an iMovie library.
Also, it might be that your Mac's system needs a little tweaking. Try these two procedures, as they are easy to do (basically, booting up while holding down certain keys).
Resetting
the System Management Controller
Try resetting the System Management
Controller (but no longer available for the new M1 computers):
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295
Resetting the NVRAM or PRAM
Try resetting the NVRAM or PRAM.
:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063
-- Rich