Cannot import iMovie 9 files into iMovie 10

Ok, so I installed Mavericks and iMovie 10. Everything looked great.

As I launch iMovie, I am informed that previous data needs to be imported into a new Library. I'm fine with that so I click OK. And then nothing happens. The software behaves as if it had finished importing, but not a single project from iMovie 9 gets imported.

I tried to import manually, and iMovie tells me that items such as "blah-blah/0000.data" are not recognized or cannot be imported and it only imports the completed film created for each project (the movies found in ProjectName.rcproject/Movies/") and nothing else. Not very useful since it makes them uneditable.

I tried trashing all the iMovie prefs I could find in the Preferences folder of my Library and the "UpdatedToiMovie10" files : it worked in getting iMovie 10 to behave as newly installed, but still no dice : nothing gets imported. As if my previous 41 projects didn't exist !

I was using iMovie 9.0.9 until yesterday.

Any ideas ?

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9), (15 inches late 2008)

Posted on Oct 23, 2013 7:19 AM

24 replies

Mike '77

Level 1

10 points

Oct 27, 2013 2:36 PM in response to Pascal Lessard

Now that I have all of my projects and events transferred to iMovie 10, I find that it has randomly sorted them and is a mess.

Rather than try and re-sort, I have decided to delete everything imported and run everything up to this point loaded into iMovie 9. All new projects and events I create I will use iMovie 10.

This also solves a huge problem I had with iMovie 9 running slow due to 0.5 TB data it manages. It will now be capped and I can start over with iMovie 10.

Anyone else have any luck sorting, etc. and does anyone really like what they did with the new version?

Oct 29, 2013 5:40 PM in response to Mike '77

I have a similar problem, but it seems to crash when it tries to process a project that I moved to trash and does not appear in the iMovie9 project library. Any thoughts? Thanks,

Nov 3, 2013 8:32 AM in response to Pascal Lessard

I've succeeded in importing my iMovie 9.0.9 files into iMovie 10.0 using ideas found in this thread :

On my external drives, I moved all my iMovie 9.0.9-related folders (iMovie Projects, iMovie Original Movies, iMovie Events) to the root level of each external drives (I had generally moved them to an iLife/iMovie/ folder to reduce clutter)
I searched for (and removed) the file "UpdatedToiMovie10" everywhere (in all the iMovie Projects, iMovie Original Movies and iMovie Events folders of every disk)
I trashed all iMovie 10.0-style iMovie Library and iMovie Theater files
I searched for all iMovie prefs I could find in my ~/Library folder and moved those to the trash
Launched iMovie 10.0 again, and it behaved as if it had never been lauched before, offering me to import all my previous projects
Clicked ok and waited... waited... waited. Importing was relatively quick, but recreating the movies in the Theater file was very long.

In the end I finally got all my projects imported in an iMovie Library file, one for each drive where each projects had been saved before, while all the completed movies where consolidated in a single ginourmous iMovie Theater file in my ~/User folder (drats).

Nov 3, 2013 8:49 AM in response to Pascal Lessard

I had the same issue with my project not opening in iMovie 10 above and this worked for me. I was still able to open the file in iMovie 9 by using the "open with" option from the Finder menu. This works as a good work around until a good fix is found.

rynohare

Level 1

0 points

Nov 26, 2013 8:33 AM in response to Pascal Lessard

i have a related problem!

i went to delete the "imovieupdate" folder etc etc and relaunch the version10.0 so as i could update project/events to make them compatible in the new version however in the process i accidently deleted my "imovie events" (dont ask!) so now im just left with the "imovie project" i was working on from version 9. this updated fine in version 10 however now i have no events and the preview window reads "source clip missing"

how do i recover my events as i still have them on my hard drive, reimporting DID NOT WORK

Tactos

Level 1

5 points

Nov 26, 2013 3:17 PM in response to rynohare

I'll talk about basic things but I have to ask the questions as you erased the folder instead of files.

1º - see if it is already in the recycling?

2º- have active time machine? can restore from there if you have.

without any of these two options, I think there is nothing to do ....

I used google translator

Apr 28, 2014 11:06 AM in response to Michael59

Hi, they took down that article on the apple site. Do you have acopy of it?

LimaLoco

Level 1

0 points

Dec 27, 2014 7:20 AM in response to Mike '77

My iMac hard drive died after (during?) installing Yosemite, so with a new hard drive and new Yosemite install, iMovie 10.0.6, when it found my events and projects, had them grayed out and inaccessible too. I followed Mike '77's above instructions and restarted iMovie, then updated projects and events, and it found everything and made it all available -- whoopie! But why does it take experimenters like us to provide this info? Doesn't this sort of thing happen to ANYONE who works at Apple???

Mar 10, 2016 12:16 PM in response to Pascal Lessard

Ever since I upgraded to El Capitan, I have not been able to complete a very large project that had almost 100 photos and pdf files in addition to many 50 + year old home movies. I am talking about a project that I have been working on for over a year. Every photo and pdf file was black when playing the movie back in iMovie 9 or even when exporting it to MV4 format. I even wrote a letter to an Apple senior executive asking for an engineering fix.

Thank you, thank you for the instructions on how to reinitiate iMovie 10 so that I could import all my iMovie 9 projects and media. I can now finish my project, even though I prefer working in the iMovie 9 environment since it is just easier to use especially with the key stroke shortcuts. iMovie 10 is similar to Apple's Final Cut Express that I had attempted to use several years ago but gave up since iMovie 9 is so much easier to use.

I'll try to continue to use iMovie 9 when I am not using still photos.

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Cannot import iMovie 9 files into iMovie 10