iMovie capacity to sort movies into folders

Agreed that iMovie likely is not completely free. I suspect that the price of it is somehow built into the cost of the Mac -- but maybe not. It's free in the since that it comes with the Mac with no additional outlay required. It's not like Final Cut Pro X that costs about $300 above the cost of the Mac.

If you want a good free movie editor that others have recommended, you might look into DaVinci 17.

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/

I believe that DaVinci requires Catalina or later. It's got a ton of features, competitive with Final Cut Pro X I am told. It may have some or all of the features that you want.

-- Rich

iMovie is a free consumer movie editing app. While it has file management capability, that isn't its strong suit. The Photos app is much more capable for file management, and you can access the files in albums or individually via the Photos item in the iMovie sidebar. Or, you can store your media and videos in the finder and group them there in folders and subfolders. I share out my projects and store them in finder folders organized by year. I then can always import the shared project video back into a new iMovie project or event. While editing is limited, one can still do quite a bit.

I, too, would like the capability of grouping projects in albums or events. Unfortunately, it is not there as you mention. However, since one can create an unlimited number of iMovie libraries there is the ability to group categories of projects in separate libraries. For instance you can have libraries named Vacation, Holidays, Birthdays, Travel, Year 2022, and move or copy your projects into the appropriate library. Before moving a project you would first want to do a File/Consolidate Project Media from the projects browser screen to insure that all of the project's media is carried over with it.

Of course, as noted above, you can always share out a project and import the final project back into iMovie, into a project or an event.

Regarding #2, you can drag-move an image or video clip from the Project Media browser screen into a new or existing event in the sidebar, and then delete the clip from the timeline. As you know, only the original clip will go in, not the edited version, so you can't move edited clips. To move edited clips you would need to create an ancillary project and then Edit/Copy, Edit/Paste, (or Edit/Cut, Edit/Paste) the edited clip from your master project to the ancillary project. The edits will carry over. You can move the clip back by the same process.

-- Rich