Why is my iMovie 10 Library so big after deleting all projects and events?

Replying now to help the hopeless. Because until a few seconds ago I was hopeless.

I was running iMovie version 10.1.6 at the time of writing this. I was in the middle of an extremely lengthy project, cutting down a 4.7 hour video. Even at that length, I only had ~50Gb of .mp4 files in the iMovie library, yet it would randomly display that I had 157Gb of iMovie. Which I knew was wrong. I had recently done a Time Machine restore, so I thought perhaps that could be the issue, but it was not. After moving the project/event to an external hard drive, deleting the library on the SSD, and then restoring the project to Internal Storage, a matter of days passed before it once again told me I was out of space. Then I took the advice of my grandfather, if at first you don't succeed, try something else. So I took to this forum, combined several answers, and with trial and error found the actual solution. It is in fact the render files, as revjonallen suggested. However, nowhere could I find the Library in Finder, only in system where it would not allow me to double- or right-click. So to clear the files, I discovered if you...

• Open iMovie
• Enter the Projects listing (if not already there)
• Click the "iMovie" tab in the status bar up top, above the window, to the left of "File"
• Click "Preferences"

At the bottom of that mini-window reads, "Render Files" with an option to delete. Freed 130 Gb. Who knew.

Hope this helped.

~The Technicolor Geek, B.A.G. Studios on YouTube

This is very easy and you don't need any external programs.

In Finder go to "Movies" and find "iMovie Library"

Right click (or double click if you don't have that enabled) on "iMovie Library" and then go to "Show Package Contents"

Go into each of the folders and look for "Original Media" and "Render Files"

(Note: You may or may not have anything in your "High Quality Media" folder. If you do, delete that too.)

In "Original Media" delete all the files (if that is what you want. Alternatively, you can only delete selected files. Remember, these are just copies that iMovie has created and are NOT your original files stored elsewhere on your computer.)

In "Render files" you will see two folders: "Peaks Data" and "Thumbnail Media"

Delete all folders in both Peaks Data and Thumbnail Media.

You have to go into each of the folders of iMovie Library and look for "Original Media" and "Render Files."

You will need to perform this operation on a regular basis to keep iMovie from getting cluttered with old files.

I just posted a similar question, but I'm afraid that nobody will give us a correct answer.

I had same problem and I believe it comes down to the size of the iMovie trash. It keeps deleted items around in case you undo your delete, I guess.

What I had to do was run OmniDiskSweep (also mentioned in some other threads here) and using that utility you can see iMovie's Trash folder that you can't see otherwise. Point it to the primary iMovie folder and look around. You can see its size, plus you can also delete the folder.

This drove me nuts...it should be documented.

When you import iMovie version 9 (iMovie 11) projects and events into iMovie version 10, it takes up a little more space, but not a lot. This is because, iMovie 10 uses hard links (similar to the hard links in Time Machine) to point to the physical video files, so they are not duplicated. So if you delete an event in iMovie 10, you will not regain the space unless you ALSO delete the corresponding event in iMovie Version 09. Now both hard links are gone and the file can be deleted. As long as there is a hard link attached to a file, it will not be deleted.

I can't thank you enough for the OmniDiskSweep suggestion. I'm not new to iOS, but COMPLETELY new to OS X, and most certainly new to iMovie, but managed to create an awesome multi-media presentation as a final class project for a University course. After deleting everything I could possibly see, emptying the trash, you name it - my Library folder was still showing itself to be over 13GB in size. Whisky Tango Foxtrot. ODS allowed me to view a bunch of high quality media like dugost mentioned, above, and the second it was gone, the file size went down to MB. Thanks so very much. 😍

I just got back into editing with iMovie & noticed this problem. Went into the Movies folder and right clicked (Keyboard = Control - Click) on the iMovie Library file. Clicked on Show Package Contents. Show Info(ed) the files to see the culprit, which were the Temp files in my case. Moved the large files into the Trash & Emptied Trash. Gained 54G on my system 120G SSD. It should really be a lot easier than doing this or getting other software.

Don't need to buy an external program. Just find "iMovie Library" in your Finder. Double click and select "Show Package Contents". In the finder window that opens, select:

My Movie -> Render Files -> High Quality Media

Willing to bet you will find original saved files of your media. Trash 'em.

Voila...

Dear revjonallen,

THANK YOU! So easy.