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Should I compress my movie files?

Thanks to all the wonderful help I received from this community, I have figured out how to put home made DVDs into iMovie, so that I can edit them. Now I have another problem: all these videos have nearly consumed all the space on my hard drive! I was able to burn a DVD of one project in iMovie, but when I tried to do the second one, was told that there wasn't enough memory.


I have put all the movie files that I exported using Quicktime to the desktop. Then I imported those files to iMovie.


So, one question is whether or not I still need those movies on the desktop or can they be deleted?


The other question is: I have a lot of movies that I have made of my students' performances. Some are in Disk Utility, some are in iMovie. Should I "store" these on an external hard drive or should I compress these files? I am hesitant to get rid of them, because I never know when I may need to make a composite DVD to submit for a grant proposal (when you're an elementary music teacher, you don't have much of a budget, so I am constantly writing grants to get what I need for my students).


I apologize in advance for not being very techno savvy, and I do appreciate all the wonderful folks who walked me through the importing process for homemade DVDs over the last two days.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), also have iMovie and iDVD

Posted on Feb 9, 2013 8:29 PM

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Posted on Feb 9, 2013 9:57 PM

As you have already found out, video is the biggest consumer of disc space.

I would buy a large external HD, at least 1TB but 2TB or more would be better.

This new drive needs to be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - (via Disk Utility) and HAS to connect to your computer via firewire - not USB.

You can then keep all your video files on this external drive, they never have to be on your internal HD.

There are instructions in iMovie Help on how to move video to an external disc.

You could partition this drive and use a portion of it as your time machine backup.

If you have totally finished with your video files and never want to do any more with them, then certainly you can trash them and then Empty your trash.

If you imported all of them into iMovie then you now have 2 copies although iMovie may have altered them depending upon your preferences.

I always keep my raw unedited files on an external drive in case I ever want to re-use them but that is up to you.

Events can be deleted from iMovie ONLY after you have exported your project otherwise your project will no longer function.

Best,

4 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Feb 9, 2013 9:57 PM in response to iteachmusic

As you have already found out, video is the biggest consumer of disc space.

I would buy a large external HD, at least 1TB but 2TB or more would be better.

This new drive needs to be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - (via Disk Utility) and HAS to connect to your computer via firewire - not USB.

You can then keep all your video files on this external drive, they never have to be on your internal HD.

There are instructions in iMovie Help on how to move video to an external disc.

You could partition this drive and use a portion of it as your time machine backup.

If you have totally finished with your video files and never want to do any more with them, then certainly you can trash them and then Empty your trash.

If you imported all of them into iMovie then you now have 2 copies although iMovie may have altered them depending upon your preferences.

I always keep my raw unedited files on an external drive in case I ever want to re-use them but that is up to you.

Events can be deleted from iMovie ONLY after you have exported your project otherwise your project will no longer function.

Best,

Feb 10, 2013 1:07 PM in response to iteachmusic

I never compress my movies, I always leave them at the same size at which they were shot.

Why would you want to do that? If it is to save disc space then I consider it to be false economy.

Yes time machine makes a back up of your files but that it not what I was talking about.

Either get a new drive or partition your existing drive (which would have to be wiped first).

Have one partition only for time machine and the other for general purpose specifically for working with video files.

Import your video either directly to this external drive or through iMovie and do all your editing to and from this new drive.

That result is that video never is stored on your internal HD, so you should never run out of space on your HD.

Best,

Should I compress my movie files?

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