Q: Cannot export movie files from iPhoto 11 (9.5)

Created a Smart Album of Just Video File extensions

Somewhat simpler: A smart album with the conditions: Photo -> is -> Movie

Then just Selected all and dragged and dropped all in the new album to a folder in Finder.

I would be very careful with drag and drop of movie files. In some cases iPhoto will export the whole movie, but in others it will only export a single frame preview, so I'd be double checking that each of those actually plays.

This issue drove me crazy as well. It seems that if I'm an iMovie user I would always want the video to go straight into iMovie not iPhoto. And yet the movie export from iPhoto is totally broken!

OK, so I have written a program which can copy the Movies out of the iPhoto 11 library and put them in a separate directory with their original event names. This will probably only work on iPhoto 11 library.

You can access the program here: https://github.com/patrickcollins12/perl download the file export_iphoto_videos.pl

This is a Perl5 script. Mac OSX comes with Perl pre-installed.

In order to use this script you will need to be familiar with the Terminal and the command line and know your Administrator password for your Mac.

Open the Terminal.

Install a Perl module:

  $ sudo cpan

  password:

  cpan> install Mac::PropertyList::SAX

   cpan> quit

Find the path to your iPhoto library, inside the package is a file called AlbumData.xml.

Run the program as follows:

   $ perl export_iphoto_videos.pl /Users/<yourusername>/Pictures/iPhoto Library/AlbumData.xml <destination>

where

    <yourusername> is the name of your home directory, and

    <destination> is a directory where you want the movies to be copied to. This argument is optional. If you don't specify, the videos will be copied out of the iPhoto library into a directory called iPhotoMovies.

Deleting the Movies from iPhoto

Once this is done, you can delete the Movies out of iPhoto manually. To do this, create a Smart Album in iPhoto (File -> New Smart Album) with the filter is "Photo ... is ... Movie". Choose this Smart Album and you should see all of your Movies. Select all of the movies (Command-A). Then delete all of the movies by pressing Command-Option-Delete. They'll stay in your trash until you Empty the Trash.

Yes I also have the same issue.

Truly annoying and have not managed to find a solution.

I have posted this issue to Apple and hope for a upgrade of SW to sort this out.

For me it actually worked with copy past of individual movies, but this will not work for a large amount of movies...

But still good to check that the movies really are transferred correctly.

Why not just import video into iMovie using the media browser in iMovie?

Importing is described in detail under the user tip on accessing your files in iPhoto

and if you want to export the video why bother with a Peal script - simply select te movie(s) inn iPhoto and export as kind is original to the desired desktop folder

Exporting is described in detail in the user tip on exporting

LN

The reason for me importing both video and pictures into iPhoto is to keep all pictures and movies at the same place. This simplifies for me in the creation of albums, presentations and when presenting ex vacation trips etc for families and friends.

The issues with manuel selection is I have 25'+ photos/movies and manual selection is really timeconsuming and sometimes even hard to find the photos.

I hope for updates from Apple

If you're trying to get multiple videos out of iPhoto have you tried assembling them in a Smart Album, selected those you want and dragging to a folder on the Desktop? That works for me.

Thanks, this really helped me handling the export of movies.

Stil requires some tailoring and work but it definitely simplifies.

Big thanks.

When trying to export videos from iPhoto I received the message 'unable to prepare video for export'

I was using the export option 'Original' and was trying to export them to my iMovie Events folder so I could access them by iMovie.

I found that videos in iPhoto which are in the format .3gp, .avi or .mp4 could not be exported. They each came up with the above error message.

Essentially, you need to convert these videos to .mov files.

The method I used was:

In iPhoto use 'Reveal in Finder'. This showed that the video was in one of the video formats above.

I then right clicked on the file as shown in the Finder and chose 'Open With' .... Quicktime 7  which opened the video.

With the video open in Quicktime 7, I then saved the file as a Movie directly into the iMovie Events folder (which I had created to receive these videos).

If iMovie is open when you perform these operations you need to close and re-open the iMovie app. After you re-open iMovie, the program recognises the videos which have been saved into the Event folder.

Note that the date of the video as shown in the Events folder will be the date when you did the 'Save As' procedure. This will need to be changed later if you want the original date to show.

This solved my problem!  I suspect iMovie doesn't like the file format my Blackberry Q10 made the movie in.

OMG! I wasted SO much valubale time struggling with what should have been a simple action.

UNBELEAVABLE that so many Mac users simply cannot move iphoto movies to imovie. 

Many, many threads on this issue.

Futhermore, when Mac gives you these errors, they should include a button or link that says "Click here to resolve this problem." 

I know, I know...Apple obvously doesn't KNOW how to solve the problems, or they would have issued patches or fixes.  BUT, they could at least link to HERE, where users so often solve problems that Apple can't or wont.

Seriously? A Perl5 script is needed to fix stuff a mom should be able to do?

So here's my Plan B:

A very close freind of mine is buddies with Steve Wozniak.  He invites Woz to speak at his events, and always let's me meet the guest speakers back stage.

So the next one I attend, I'm going to hand Woz my Mac and say "Here's some movies in iphoto. Here is imovie. Here's the Export and Import menus.  Go ahead, give it a go."

I'll shoot a video of him struggling with it, until he gives up and mumbles something about how this would have never happened back in the good ol' days, and Steve is rolling over in his grave, etc.

Then I have a choice: 

1.  Upload to YouTube watch it go viral in the hopes somone at Apple will FINALLY fix this issue (and perhaps fix the oh-so-popular Finder search issue, where so many results appear it's useless), or...

2.  Send the video to Apple and hope now maybe they better understand our frustration and fix it.

Probably I'll do #2 before #1. My goal is not to embarass Apple, but I spend a LOT of money with them for my family:

-Mac Desktop

-2 Mac Books

-8 iphones (4, 4s, 5c, 5s)

-3 ipads

-Too many ipods to count

...so I expect better.

Or, hopefully somone at Mac will see this, save me the trouble, and fast-track it for resolution?

LIKE this post if you agree...

The route to Apple is via the Feedback mechanism.

iPhoto Menu -> Provide iPhoto Feedback

Given that your "plan" is an attempt to embarrass someone who has no involvement in the day-to-day running of Apple, I bet both Woz and your friend will be really pleased with you. Especially Woz. I wonder how often he'll want to oblige your friend in the future, or if your friend will invite you backstage to meet speakers in the future.

Use the Feedback mechanism. It's what grown-ups do.

Thanks, Commercialized -- your recommended tip worked for me as well (repair permissions; then, rebuild thumbnails).  Now, I can select a whole series of images and videos within iPhoto, click File / Export, choose Kind

--> "Original", and >bam<, the selected videos are (now) successfully exported to the destination right along with the selected images, without issue. 

Appreciate the very helpful suggestion.

Others would do well to attempt this fix before trying something far more involved, like, say, a Perl script or iPhoto Library Manager (although the latter utility does have its uses).

Thank you Old Toad!

Using iPhoto Library Manager just worked for me.

But wow it took the better of 5 hours, which probably would be about the same amount of time I'd spend manually moving the videos and then having to batch rename them with another third-party tool.

After being a lover of iPhoto for a few years now, I just concluded I want to access them from the cloud.

iPhoto is a great door to simply getting the masses to organize photos, something all my Windows friends and family don't do but I have to go back to the antiquated folder layout to have affordable cloud storage that is viewable from any platform.

I'm looking into Aperture now.

I'm looking into Aperture now.

For what reason?

Old Toad wrote:

For what reason?

My brief glimpse at the Apple's page for it showed it as a more robust iPhoto but various storage options. If the library is treated the same and I can't use Aperture to edit and sort my cloud synced local folder of photos, then it won't be for me.