IMovie '11 How do I recover a project that appears within the IMovie Projects folder but does not show in the Project Library?

Sorry, I don't understand the point of the DVD. DVD is normally something you can watch, hence my confusion. I understand why you made a copy, but why copy it to DVD? Why not just copy it to a folder that is outside of the iMovie folders?

I had the exact same thing happen to me last night. I have been working on a project now for about 3 weeks and to my horror, it disappeared without warning! I do not have a backup copy and have no way of recovering the project via Time Machine as, being new to a Mac, didn't realise you had to turn this feature on! Seems strange that it's not 'on' by default!?!?

I have spoken with Apple this morning who first tried creating an additional user profile on my Macbook Pro with Administrator settings to see if the file could be accessed by a different user, but we could not share the file for some reason despite following all his instructions???

The next suggestion was to uninstall imovie and then reinstall via the App store although I have my doubts this will work.

I have also tried deleting the above suggested files within User - Library - Preferences but no good.

If the reinstallation of imovie does not work, I will make an appointment to go see someone at my local store and see what they can do. I just hope there is some way of recovering my work! The file is there in my imovie projects folder, but upon opening it, it does not show in the project library when imovie opens up???

I have decided not to uninstall then reinstall imovie incase anything is permanently lost during the uninstallation and I ultimately end up worse off. I have made an appointment at my local store for 10:30am Saturday morning. I'm also going to give Apple tech support one more chance tonight over the phone to see if a fresh head can think of anything else to try.

I simply cannot be without this project!

OK. Has any tried running Show Package Contents on the .rcproject file to see if anything unusual shows up? (Right-click the .rcproject file, click Show Package Contents.) In there you will find a file called simply Project. If you have TextWrangler on your Mac you can open the file and see XML code. Maybe that got corrupted somehow.

Does this happen only after iMovie has been closed first?

Is it, perhaps, always the most recently selected project?

Does it, perhaps, happen after a reboot? A reboot with iMovie still open?

Is there any pattern associated with disappeared projects?

I doubt any of the above will help, but some of it may at least be new things to try.

Looks like only iMovie developers will be able to fix this.

Yes, iMovie is an awesome product in many ways. It has a number of annoying bugs and a couple of annoying design decisions (why does the Cmd-Y info bubble insist on disappearing after 10 seconds? or why is there not a clock? e.g.) Some bugs I've experienced appear to be limited to frame-rate mismatches. Keywords don't work correctly, for one thing. I think this is also the cause of my not being able to use the Precision Editor. The biggest thing that mystifies me is that thumbnails often don't show the first frame of their clips. I've verified this problem by splitting a trailer clip an Apple Tech told me to download. It was 24 fps and still exhibited the problem. I brought this up elsewhere in this forum and it appears that I am the only one who cares about this.

Overall, though, iMovie is a cool product. Agreed.

AEF

Some bugs I've experienced appear to be limited to frame-rate mismatches. Keywords don't work correctly, for one thing. I think this is also the cause of my not being able to use the Precision Editor. The biggest thing that mystifies me is that thumbnails often don't show the first frame of their clips. I've verified this problem by splitting a trailer clip an Apple Tech told me to download. It was 24 fps and still exhibited the problem. I brought this up elsewhere in this forum and it appears that I am the only one who cares about this.

Overall, though, iMovie is a cool product. Agreed.

AEF

What I meant was that the "thumbnail doesn't show the first frame of its clip" problem happens even when there isn't a frame-rate mismatch. Sorry for the confusion. Oh, for me it usually shows a frame about 8 or 9 frames back, and on rare occasions shows frames from other projects! Why is this so hard to get right?

AEF

What is the "project file itself"? It already has an extension of .rcproject. Perhaps you mean the Project file you see after running Show Package Contents?

Just thought I would let you all know I went to the Apple store in B'ham to see if one of their techy guys could try and recover my project. I ended up speaking to three different people in the space of 30 minutes, none of whom were able to offer any real help or advice. They weren't even aware of the fact that it's an issue being experienced by a lot of iMovie users. I suggested they look at the forum, but they didn't seem particularly interested.

Top and tale of it is I ended up not being able to recover my work and had to start all over again!

This problems needs addressing Apple 😠

I have the exact same issue, the project appears in the project folder but not in iMovie.

I have tried pretty much everything and I can't get it to open.

Will be reporting this to Apple, it is very frustrating to lose hours and hours of work due to a glitch. Makes me

want to stay away from Apple products if they don't fix this.

I've noticed there is an update for iMovie 11 available today. Will it fix what Apple are referring to as 'general stability issues' or will it cause more?

hasburyhughesy wrote:

I've noticed there is an update for iMovie 11 available today. Will it fix what Apple are referring to as 'general stability issues' or will it cause more?

Only time will tell. It's almost impossible to test because of the random nature of the "disappearing project" (yes, I've been bitten by it too). The best solution is to have Time Machine ON when editing (note to self). 😊

John

I wish Apple would be more forthcoming about these matters the way the DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), Compac, and hp was for VMS (aka OpenVMS, aka VAXVMS). When they issued a patch for VMS (they called it an "ECO kit" [ECO stands for Engineering Change Order]), it would list in detail everything that was fixed, no matter how embarrassing. The release notes would even tell you how important the patch was. There were three levels: To be installed by all customers, those using the following features . . . , and by customers experiencing the problems corrected. Some were important for security or stability issues. You were told all these things.

That's the right way to do it. The way Apple does it, you feel lucky just to get what little they do tell you.

Admittedly, sometimes they tell you about specific security issues, as with the new iTunes patch.

Corrections:

". . . the way the DEC . . ." should be ". . . the way that DEC . . ."

". . . hp was . . ." should be ". . . hp were . . ."

"VAXVMS" should be "VAX/VMS"