When I import a movie, how can I make iMovie copy it to a specific volume?

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Level 1

11 points

When I import a movie, how can I make iMovie copy it to a specific volume?

Hi there,

I'd like to start off by saying I love iMovie '11. I've never really used iMovie up until now and I must say I'm really liking it so far. That being said, I have one annoying problem that I can't seem to solve.

I have many volumes on my Mac. The first being my 40GB OWC SSD that I use solely for Mac OS X and applications. The next is my 2TB RAID 0 volume that I use for video editing. I have a Blackmagic Intensity Pro capture card that captures uncompressed video. The files can get massive. I'm talking 1GB every 10 seconds of video. Anyway, when ever I import a movie into iMovie, for some reason it insists on copying the file to my 40GB SSD. This is so annoying because I want it to be copied to my RAID 0 volume as this is my video editing volume, and this is the volume with a huge amount of space.

So how do I force iMovie to copy the file to a specific volume? There must be a way, as it's absolutely impractical to work with video files that are on the same volume as the OS, especially when it's such a small volume.

Thanks for reading and I hope to hear from someone soon.

Regards,

Daniel

Mac Pro 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Nehalem" (Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.6.4), 12GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM

Posted on Jan 26, 2011 7:39 PM

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Answer 1

IlMolto Author

Level 1

11 points

Jan 26, 2011 7:43 PM in response to IlMolto

I think I just figured it out.

Before importing, create a new event. Drag the new event to the desired volume and then drag the file you want to import from the Finder into the event that was just created. Awesome!

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Answer 2

Jan 26, 2011 8:02 PM in response to IlMolto

The key is that the external drive must be formatted as MacOS Extended (Journaled).

If it is, you can select the external drive from the import screen.

If you have existing events that you have already used in projects,
You need to move them from within iMovie.

Click View/Events By Disk.
Then, in the Event Library list, hold the command key down while dragging the event icon to the drive icon.

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Answer 3

Jan 26, 2011 8:06 PM in response to IlMolto

Just curious. Do you have Final Cut Pro installed? I am wondering if that is a prerequisite for editing uncompressed video in iMovie.

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Answer 4

IlMolto Author

Level 1

11 points

Jan 26, 2011 8:25 PM in response to AppleMan1958

Hi AppleMan,

Thanks for your replies. That's what I was doing prior to creating a new event before importing. I was allowing iMovie to copy the file to my SSD, then once it had finished copying, I would move the file (or event I should say) to my RAID volume by holding command + dragging from within iMovie.

I don't have Final Cut Pro installed. The uncompressed video works a treat in iMovie. Very happy with it so far.

Thanks again for your replies.

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Answer 5

IlMolto Author

Level 1

11 points

Jan 26, 2011 8:43 PM in response to IlMolto

AppleMan,

You brought to my attention that there's a drop-down menu that allows you to choose which disk the file gets saved to in the import screen. How did I miss that? Well that solves my problem completely. Thanks so much for pointing that out!

One more question though. When I first opened iMovie, it created an event in my Mac OS X volume called iPhoto Videos. Is there a way to move this event to another disk?

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Answer 6

Jan 26, 2011 8:59 PM in response to IlMolto

I think you would need to move it from iPhoto.
iMovie will not touch files created in iPhoto.

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Answer 7

IlMolto Author

Level 1

11 points

Jan 26, 2011 9:27 PM in response to AppleMan1958

The thing is though my iPhoto library is in a different drive all together. iMovie created the event iPhoto Videos and automatically stored it in my OS volume...

Never mind, it's not a big deal as the event that iMovie created is fairly small. It's not going to get in the way for the most part.

Thanks again for your help.

Regards,

Daniel

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Answer 8

Jan 26, 2011 9:41 PM in response to IlMolto

It is most likely the thumbnails for the videos in iPhoto.

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