Deleting Movies Clips after Editing

I am creating a highlight video. I upload a full game to iMovie, pull clips to the timeline and then upload another game, etc and so on.


I cannot delete the full game I upload to create space to add more games without removing the clips from my timeline.


is there a way to do this? Or a better way to edit where I don’t bog down my storage with full games in iMovie? I’ve deleted them from my Mac but they are still taking up storage in iMovie


thanks

Posted on Oct 30, 2023 9:00 AM

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Oct 30, 2023 9:44 AM in response to Rfmcdo01

Hi,


As you have found, deleting the media from the timeline will not delete the media from the iMovie library. Unfortunately, deleting media from the iMovie library is very risky. (See below).


Two ways to delete media from the iMovie library:


  1. Select the clip in the timeline or in the media browser and do a File/Reveal in Finder. An Original Media folder will pop up with the name of the selected clip highlighted. Delete it from there.


2.Select and delete the media from the iMovie timeline by pressing the delete key on your keyboard. Then control click on the clip in the project media browser and select Delete Media from Event in the drop down menu.


WARNING: Be aware that deleting media from the iMovie library will remove the media from all projects that are referring to it. So you will be disabling those projects. Therefore you will need to share out the project before deleting the media if you want to preserve your work. I'm not exactly clear as to your workflow, but if you are intending to preserve several games in your iMovie project or projects, you cannot delete the clips from the iMovie library. If you do, you will end up with black thumbnails with a question mark in them and a missing file notification.


When one is working with movies and have a disk space issue, the solution is to purchase an external drive, formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or APFS, to store the iMovie libraries. That way the iMovie media files will not take up space on the internal drive.


-- Rich


-- Rich




Oct 30, 2023 11:19 AM in response to Rfmcdo01

So I’m about half way done with editing the highlight video. Would you think an option would be creating a movie with what I already have. Then starting a new movie with the second half of the highlight video, and then combine the two would work in theory?


or another option would be getting an external hard drive to save the full games to while creating the full highlight video since I should have optimal space?


thanks for the advice.

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Deleting Movies Clips after Editing

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