Retrieving a movie trashed

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Retrieving a movie trashed

Not sure how this happened, but a movie I was working on is no longer in Events or Projects. I had sent the Rejected sections to the trash and emptied iMovie trash. But the Favorites were also trashed.

In any event, I cannot reimport the trashed files. I have tried dragging to the desktop and opening with iMovie, importing with iMovie, and dragging and dropping onto iMovie to no avail.

I read about earlier 2007 recommendations to drag out the file from the trash and open its packages and look for Media. I did that but no Media file was within the packages.

I am running iMovie 9.0.8

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), 8 MB RAM

Posted on Mar 2, 2013 2:44 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 3, 2013 3:33 AM in response to William Hooper

The files need to be placed in the location that iMovie expects to find them (that's one of the strict rules of iMovie) - as follows:

On your internal drive, iMovie Events must be located in the folder <your user name>/Movies/iMovie Events
On an external drive, the Events must be in a folder at the top (root) level, named iMovie Events
On your internal drive, iMovie Projects must be located in the folder <your user name>/Movies/iMovie Projects
On an external drive, the Projects must be in a folder at the top (root) level, named iMovie Projects

(where <your user name> is your Home folder)

So, you need to drag the Event files and the Project files back to their correct locations, as described above.

Since iMovie '08 (through to iMovie '11), you won't find much media in the Project files as the media is referenced to the associated Event (or Events) - clips are not copied to the Project file. As well as referencing Events, the project file also contains information about all your edits, including titles, transitions, effects, voiceovers, music and so forth.

John

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Answer 2

Mar 3, 2013 7:55 AM in response to John Cogdell

Thank you.

I did as directed. I can now see the Project but I did not have a corresponding Event folder in my Trash.

I cannot play the movie as a error stating that the Source Clip is Missing is present.

I do not see any of the movie in the Event Library but all of it appears in the Project field.

If I hook up my external HD which contains the origional movie is there a way of reimporting the information into the Event Library without having to import the entire movie again?

Is there a way of pointing the Project with the missing source clip to find the appropriate clips located on the HD and bring just those over to my HD?

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Answer 3

Mar 3, 2013 11:02 PM in response to William Hooper

Hi William,

I'm probably a little out of my depth here, as I haven't had to deal with this situation (fortunately). I guess you are not running a backup, such as Time Machine? If so, you could restore both the Event and Project from the backup.

Anyway, I'll try to offer some advice as best I can:

I do not see any of the movie in the Event Library but all of it appears in the Project field.

What you are seeing are the thumbnails for the project, not the actual video. The thumbnails help to identify the corresponding clips in the Event that are included in your project. The actual video clips are, of course, in the Event (and referenced by the project). Using the thumbnail slider, you can adjust for the number of thumbnails you wish to view. For example, a thumbnail for every half second, one second, two seconds, five seconds, and so forth, ranging up to just one thumbnail representing the whole clip (that is, one thumbnail per clip irrespective of the clip's duration).

If I hook up my external HD which contains the original movie is there a way of reimporting the information into the Event Library without having to import the entire movie again?

The only practical course would appear to be importing the full original movie from the external hard drive into an Event in iMovie. In iMovie's menu select File > Import ⇒ Movies then navigate to the hard drive and select your movie. If the movie is not in an appropriate format for importing, try opening it in QuickTime. If it opens and plays OK, open the Inspector from the QuickTime menu (Window > Show Movie Inspector). What does it show as the Format? If it is not a format compatible with iMovie, it will need to be converted to a suitable format (such as Apple Intermediate Codec). Please come back if you need more information about this process.

Is there a way of pointing the Project with the missing source clip to find the appropriate clips located on the HD and bring just those over to my HD?

Not that I'm aware of. Perhaps another member here can offer some help with this. Your only option may be to start a new project and work with the clips imported to the new Event from the external drive (as discussed above).

Sorry to be a bit vague about all this - just trying to offer some suggestions!

John

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