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

I have had my MBP for just over 3 months now! Yes, I made the switch and up until now I have been quite happy.

I now have my Time Capsule, Apple TV running and am generally getting used to life as a Mac user.............even bought Aperture and loaded all the family photos. Now time to make some Travel movies.

I have been working on a particular IMovie project for a few weeks now. Size is 365MB. Yesterday I closed IMovie and when accessing later that project is not available in the Project Library window. It does appear in the IMovie Projects folder but I cannot open it. I have copied the file to DVD just in case. All up I have 4 Projects, the other 3 are practice files, smaller but they do appear in the Project Library.

I have scoured the bulletin boards and tried many suggested fixes to no avail. Main suggestion was to remove the following files from Library/Preferences

com.apple.iMovieApp.plist
com.apple.iApps.plist

However, this did not sort out my problem. In the end I put back the original files.

Does anyone have a straightforward fix for my problem or is this one of those ongoing issues that that needs Apple's attention.

After all the file is there with the others. They are available.

I realise that I can restore from Time Capsule but I am missing the last three days thanks to 'drop out'.

Thanks.......

iMovie '11, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), MBP

Posted on Feb 3, 2013 8:22 PM

Best reply

John Cogdell

Level 5

4,698 points

Posted on Feb 4, 2013 5:11 AM

That's very strange. I've had exactly the same problem. See my first post in the following thread for more details:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4748933?tstart=0

Sorry I can't help solve this. It's very frustrating to find, after closing iMovie, that a project has gone missing from the Project Library (although it's still listed in the Finder).

I'm beginning to think that an update to either iMovie or Mountain Lion may be the culprit. I've been using iMovie in all its iterations since 2001 and haven't seen this problem before (although the Events/Projects style only started with iMovie '08 of course).

John

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52 replies

Gweggie Boy Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 5, 2014 9:02 PM in response to betaneptune

FYI, I have OSX 10.9.2 and iMovie 9.0.9

I installed upgrade to iMovie 10.0.2 last year but had heaps trouble so I now run 9.0.9 whenever I want to do anything. Have a few freinds in the same boat!!!

enelyyy

Level 1

4 points

Apr 6, 2014 2:13 AM in response to betaneptune

I have iMovie 10.0.2 and OSX 10.9.2

Apr 10, 2014 2:44 PM in response to Gweggie Boy

I had a similar issue. I made a project yesterday. Went to open it today and nothing was there. Just an empty project file.

I solved it this way with AppleCare's help:

QUIT iMovie First. Then...

1- Go to: Home > Movies > Right Click and 'Show Packet Contents' for "imovie library.imovielibrary"

2- Locate the project you want to open that has gone missing.

3- Delete any special characters (&, $, #, ?, etc) both in that folder, and in the folder within that folder of the same name.

4- Drag the .flexolibrary file to your desktop

5- Go back to: Home > Movies > and double click on "imovie library.imovielibrary"

6- iMove should open and your project should be there.

AppleCare states that special characters cause the file to become 'lost' to the library.

By changing that and then throwing out the .flexolibary file, AND THEN reopening it, you are forcing iMovie to re-look at your project files.

Hope that helps.

enelyyy

Level 1

4 points

Apr 11, 2014 5:40 AM in response to sevisirhc

That's sad, nothing happens, it still couldn't find it. Now my imovie shows that there's 8 projects, but there's only 4. It *****, I still miss my video, I don't want to do it again.

Apr 11, 2014 6:17 AM in response to Gweggie Boy

Still no fix by the look of it! I had to redo the project that I lost from the beginning - very annoying! I have since gone and purchased an external HDD and enabled Time Capsule. It's about time Apple acknowledged this is a serious problem that needs addressing!

DJVH

Level 1

0 points

May 6, 2014 10:30 PM in response to hasburyhughesy

This just happened to my daughter on a school project that is due tomorrow that she had spent hours working on. After reading this forum she went to bed despondent. As a desperate mom with no knowledge of Macs I stumbled on something very simple that I hope will help some others. Her project was on her desktop - when we right clicked and said "Get info" it showed it was full size 85 MB; double clicking the icon caused iMovie to open but the project was not in her project library and we could not drag it there.

When we opened the" iMovie Projects" folder (found that by opening Finder and then from the top of the screen choosing GO -> Home -> Movies -> iMovie Projects) there was seeminglying the same icon with the same project name; but, "Get Info" revealed that this file was only a few KB's - not the full 85 MB's. So, we deleted the very small file, drug the full sized file from the desktop into the iMovie Projects folder, double clicked it and it worked perfectly!

I hope that this helps someone else! I'm going to bed now - sleep deprived but my daughter's project is saved!

Jun 6, 2016 5:29 PM in response to DJVH

Hi there, mom, I know yo posted this 2 years ago, but I am ETERNALLY in your debt. I've been reading threads and trying every idea out there to find my iMovie '11 projects. 2 slideshows. I about died, as I could not find them. I had moved them to the desktop for easy access, and they must have left to those tiny kb trails you mentioned. I followed your advice and they are both back into the projects file. Totally good and ready to go. One day too late, as sadly, during the celebration I couldn't find or play them. But I'm still so deeply grateful to have them back!

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