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I get Insufficient disk space message when trying to import jpeg files into iMovie.
There is over 500 Gb of free space on my HD.
Can't download most recent version of iMovie which requires Mac OS 11.5,1 or later.
Have reinitialized IMovie to no avail.
I feel trapped !!
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15
The iMovie Library is indeed a package on my HD that contains all my previous projects and also the new (empty) project.
It occupies 23.58 Gb on the disk. Is there a limit to the size of packages ?
Disk Utility tells me that I have 512 Gb available on my 750Gb HD. I am puzzled that it says that my HD is shared between 5 volumes.
In IMovie, when I try to import media, it wants to send it to "Project data" in the Library. I have also tried sending it to an Event such as 2021-12-14 but that still gives me the same error message.
I believe iMovie was bundled in my MacBook when I got it so there would be no record of purchase in the AppStore.
Since I could not download iMovie, I deleted the existing version and dragged an earlier version (from before the Catalina upgrade) from my backup disk. And I reinitialized iMovie to reset all plists to original values. Still the same problem.
I have looked at various plists associated with iMovie and they all point to my HD.
Your storage display graph is different than on my Mac. Is that what came up when you clicked on Apple Logo/About this Mac/Storage? It says that the disk is shared with 5 volumes. So it appears that it may be partitioned. Did you buy your Mac second hand, or other than brand new? If so, perhaps the previous owner partitioned it. On a second hand computer, iMovie may not have been bundled on it.
My storage display, with two external drives, looks like this:
There are no limits to the size of an iMovie library folder. If it gets very very large, like 500 GB, there might be a drop off in performance, and possibly some crashing. If iMovie is on, or ever was on, your Mac acquired under your Apple I.D, you should be able to update/redownload it.
I do not know what might be happening in your case to give the insufficient space message. Perhaps the partitions are causing the problem. It may be simply a matter of moving the iMovie library from one partition to a larger one. You might want to call Apple Support and talk to the techs there. They have the capability of remotely accessing your computer, that we cannot do here. To contact Apple Support click on the Get Support item in the upper right hand corner of this forum's screen. Navigate to a place where you can enter you phone number.
-- Rich
-- Rich
Bought it new.
Here is the About this Mac picture.
As far as the five Volumes, I think it refers to the 5 types of storage shown on the picture (HD, Data, VM, Recovery and Not mounted).
I wonder if my problem has to do with iMovie wanting to save data on iCloud which I do not really use except for backups.
It certainly want to put things there by default when trying to share a movie.
I just changed iMovie Preferences as far as using iCloud and storing project data. Will see what that does.
The insufficient space message used to pop up when Catalina was first released. The solution was to redownload iMovie. You are correct that you can't get the current iMovie version, but you can get a redownload of the highest version that Catalina can run.
Try this procedure: To update/redownload iMovie 10, drag your iMovie 10 app from the Applications folder into the trash, but do not empty the trash. Sign in to the app store and open your purchases folder by clicking on your name at the bottom of the app store side bar. You will see your purchases displayed, including iMovie 10. Redownload/update iMovie from there. You should be able to get a redownload of the highest iMovie version that Catalina can run. It might be a higher version than you are presently running. If not successful, drag your present iMovie app out of the trash and return it to the Applications folder.
Before doing that, confirm that the drive that contains your iMovie library actually has insufficient space. The imported media loads into whatever drive that contains the destination iMovie library, not your Mac's internal drive.
-- Rich
With Catalina the data is partitioned separately from the system files. This is different from the previous OS, Mojave. I think that is what your screen shot is showing, as the HD is shown to have much less space than the data portion. It has been suggested that perhaps the Mac is erroneously reporting the system file size as that of the data file size, and thus reporting insufficient space. It seems that redownloading iMovie somehow cures this. So I would try that.
-- Rich
Thank yo for your help.
I got extremely good on line support from three different persons and was finally guided to download the most recent version of iMovie that would run on my Mac (10.2.5) and that solved the problem !!
All I had to do is Trash the old iMovie and click on my profile in the Appstore and tell it to download iMovie.
Alleluia !!!
😊 That was exactly the procedure that I suggested in my first post. Nice to see that Apple Support agrees with me.
Glad that you got it working.
-- Rich
Insufficient disk space message in Imovie 10.1.11 under Catalina 10.15.7
