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How to point iMovie to video files?

Hi. I have my iPhoto 11 library located in the following folder structure on an external drive: iPhoto/iPhoto Library. All of my photos and video clips are in this library. iPhoto is able to locate this library without problem.

iMovie 11, however, is unable to find the library. The video clips do not appear as Events in iMovie. How do I tell iMovie where to find my video clips? I know how to use the File > Import command in iMovie to copy the video clips from the external drive to my internal drive, but I do not want to do this. I just want to point iMovie 11 to the folder location of my video files. Anyone know how to do this?

Thank you

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Jan 29, 2011 2:16 PM

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15 replies

Jan 29, 2011 3:54 PM in response to pomme4moi

pomme4moi wrote:
Hi. I have my iPhoto 11 library located in the following folder structure on an external drive: iPhoto/iPhoto Library. All of my photos and video clips are in this library. iPhoto is able to locate this library without problem.

iMovie 11, however, is unable to find the library. The video clips do not appear as Events in iMovie. How do I tell iMovie where to find my video clips? I know how to use the File > Import command in iMovie to copy the video clips from the external drive to my internal drive, but I do not want to do this. I just want to point iMovie 11 to the folder location of my video files. Anyone know how to do this?

Thank you



When I go to File> Import> Movies, it lets me select Folders from my Macintosh HD in whoever's user folder it is. Which in turn lets me select videos from where I stored them..

Jan 30, 2011 3:27 AM in response to pomme4moi

pomme4moi wrote:
... I need to move my iPhoto 11 library back onto my internal hard drive. Then all works fine ...


does iPhoto actually 'notice' its external Library?

and: is that external drive 'Mc'-formatted, or as most HDD out-of-the-box, fat32, or a 'network' drive, or ntfs formatted? if so, iM can not read from such drives ....

Jan 30, 2011 3:45 AM in response to Karsten Schlüter

Yes, it is formatted as Mac OS Extended Journaled. I moved my iPhoto library to the external drive a few months ago and it works fine. But to create a new project in iMovie, I need to access the video clips that are stored in the iPhoto library. For some reason, iMovie can't "see" the iPhoto library on the external drive. If I make a copy of the iPhoto library and put the copy on my internal drive, iMovie can see it all all works well. A puzzle ...

Jan 30, 2011 10:50 PM in response to pomme4moi

pomme4moi wrote:
... formatted as Mac OS Extended Journaled ... and it works fine. .. A puzzle ...


indeed. my assumption was, iM can not notice the drive due to wrong format - nope. and iM + iP are part of a suite of apps, so if one can fetch the Lib, my idea was, the other does too. - 😟

I'm not familiar with storing videos in a photo.app 😉 , so I'm puzzled too ... sorry, of being no help.

Apr 11, 2011 5:41 AM in response to pomme4moi

Had same problem but figured it out. In the events Lib window. Drag an event from one drive to the other. It will copy the event but creat an event folder at the same time.
Go to the finder find that folder on the drive and drag all the events on that drive into the folder. Restart imovie adn yes it all shows up 😉. Good luck

Feb 18, 2012 10:19 AM in response to pomme4moi

REVIVING THIS DISCUSSION - I have the same problem as the original poster: iMovie doesnt see the iPhoto library housed on an external drive.


I keep my main iPhoto library (100G) on an external hard drive and a small "misc" iphoto library on my Macbook. (Both back up with Time Machine to a different external drive.) I can choose which iPhoto library to open by pressing "Option" when I launch iPhoto, and both work just fine with iPhoto. I can't access my external iPhoto library through iMovie; it only sees the small "misc" iPhoto library on my Macbook. How do I get iMovie to see the iPhoto library that is on the external drive? Importing back onto my Macbook drive is not an option for me. Please, anyone, offer help if you can!!!!!

Aug 5, 2013 3:06 AM in response to pomme4moi

G'Day fellas, gtry this one:


In IM select the external HD where your Iphoto video clips are stored

right click (or control select) on the external HD

the fifth row in the drop down menu is Group events by Disk and it will be ticked, untick it, the disk drives will disappear

right click anywhere in the Event Library panel and the same drop down menu should pop up, reselect Group events by Disk

your iphoto video files should now appear in the movie preview panel to the right of the Event Library panel


let me know how you get on, it's not a permanent fix it just seems to give IM a good kick up the arse and allows you to have access to your video files, it worked for me.

How to point iMovie to video files?

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