How to backup only the project files in imovie 10.0.6

Question

How to backup only the project files in imovie 10.0.6

It looks like you could copy ONLY the project in the older imovie '11 (see here: iMovie '11: Copy or move a project to an external hard disk)but I can't seem to find a way to do this with version 10.0.6. Any attempts result in copying the entire project and clips / events. I want the project only. Any ideas? Thanks!

If there is a way to identify which are the project files in the imovie library within Finder then I guess this could work too. I want to be able to isolate the files for backup to dropbox.

(the reason: I already have the original mp4 files from my camera backed up offline so I don't want to duplicate this with the imported .mov files from imovie. Should I ever need to, I could use the project file and re-import from the mp4 files).

MacBook Air, OS X Yosemite (10.10.2), imovie 10.0.6

Posted on May 31, 2015 5:35 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

GeeD

Level 6

9,173 points

Jun 2, 2015 4:16 AM in response to SimonHughes546

This is easy to do in Final Cut Pro X and is called "external media". Unfortunately iMovie only uses "managed media" where the original media are copied to the library rather than having references to media stored elsewhere.

If you right click on an iMovie library and select "show package contents" you will find folders for each event. The original media are in separate folders and in principle you might be able to replace each file with an alias or symlink to its actual location but this would be very laborious.

One the other hand if you just backup parts of the library other than the original media I doubt that you would be able to re-import the media at some future date into the library and have it automatically 'recognised' by existing projects.

This was a problem that I also had in the past which was solved when I switched to FCP X.

Geoff.

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