iMovie destroyed my work

I'm devastated that iMovie deleted all my video projects representing long hours of hard work, including tribute videos for my late parents that brought me comfort. How can this program get away with that!?!?!


Posted on Jul 21, 2024 1:51 PM

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Posted on Jul 22, 2024 8:23 AM

Can you provide more details as to what procedures where being done that resulted in your projects being "deleted". How did you determine that the projects were delected? Did you open iMovie in the correct library and confirm from the Projects Browser screen that "All Projects" was selected and that the proper library's name is displayed?




iMovie projects are stored in the iMovie library in which they were created. So, unless your iMovie library got corrupted (which can happen) or the link to it from the iMovie app has been broken, it is unlikely that your projects could be deleted unless you manually deleted them, which of course you did not. I suspect that your projects exist somewhere in your system.


Corruption can happen in any app on any platform. Backups are essential. Apple has a Time Machine backup feature where your library can be restored to an earlier point in time before the problem occurred. Did you keep a Time Machine backup? Or did you have a backup copy of your library stored on an external drive formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or APFS?


By the way, this is a consumer forum of iMovie users like yourself. We have no control or input into Apple's software designs or decisions.


-- Rich



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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jul 22, 2024 8:23 AM in response to tigerlillyrose

Can you provide more details as to what procedures where being done that resulted in your projects being "deleted". How did you determine that the projects were delected? Did you open iMovie in the correct library and confirm from the Projects Browser screen that "All Projects" was selected and that the proper library's name is displayed?




iMovie projects are stored in the iMovie library in which they were created. So, unless your iMovie library got corrupted (which can happen) or the link to it from the iMovie app has been broken, it is unlikely that your projects could be deleted unless you manually deleted them, which of course you did not. I suspect that your projects exist somewhere in your system.


Corruption can happen in any app on any platform. Backups are essential. Apple has a Time Machine backup feature where your library can be restored to an earlier point in time before the problem occurred. Did you keep a Time Machine backup? Or did you have a backup copy of your library stored on an external drive formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or APFS?


By the way, this is a consumer forum of iMovie users like yourself. We have no control or input into Apple's software designs or decisions.


-- Rich



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iMovie destroyed my work

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