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Cannot open iMovie 09 projects that I saved on my external hard drive

Hi, I am trying to open iMovie projects that I saved on my external LaCie hard drive in 2010, with my iMovie 09 application on my MacBook Pro. I double click on the project, iMovie opens, but nothing happens - I just see my list of current projects I'm currently working on. How can I open these projects? Thanks!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Jan 14, 2014 6:45 AM

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Posted on Jan 14, 2014 3:10 PM

Are the iMovie Project and iMovie Event folders at the root (top) level of the external drive? If they are in an enclosing folder iMovie 9 won't see them.


Geoff.

5 replies

Jan 17, 2014 6:59 AM in response to GeeD

Hey Geoff. I moved the iMovies folder to the top level of my hard drive like you suggested, so I can now see the projects in my iMovies library... But for some reason I can't actually read them! I see an error message which says "source clip is missing" - but I saved all the films on my HD... and I can see the images for each project on iMovies... iMovies just won't play the whole project.


User uploaded fileUser uploaded file

Jan 17, 2014 1:26 PM in response to Johannebertauxstrenna

This means that your original media files were not in your events folder but only links to them, with the originals stored somewhere else. If you look in the events folders inside your iMovie Events folder you will probably see aliases to the clips rather than the clips themselves. If you get info on the alieases they may identify where the original was stored (or they may say the original can't be found).


You must have moved your events folder at some point which broke the links so iMovie now doesn't know where to find them. You can still see the thumbnails in the timeline because these are small low resolution files which are in your project file. Unless you can move your folders back to exactly how they were when you created the project (and on the same computer) you will have to re-import the originals and re-insert them into the timeline.


You could as an alternative try putting one of the clips manually into your events folder in place of the broken alias to it and see if it appears in the timeline when you relaunch iMovie. If this works (I'm not sure if it will) you can do it with the rest and not have to touch the project timeline.



Geoff

Jan 20, 2014 2:10 AM in response to GeeD

Still nothing. I have looked into the aliases and I can see that they are stored where I am opening them, i.e. on my external HD... I tried to copy paste them into iMovies, and to import them into iMovies - but neither option works... When I try to import them, they aren't even selectable.


This is a picture of the alias - it should be where I am clicking but nothing is happening! I am looking in the right place?

User uploaded file

Cannot open iMovie 09 projects that I saved on my external hard drive

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