Restoring to Find Movies

I recently just discovered that it is necessary to "Export", as oppose to click and drag, your movies from iPhoto to an external hard drive in order to free up space. But b/c I "dragged and dropped" there are now only images of my movies as oppose to the movies themselves. I read that it may be possible to use Time Machine to recover those videos. However, when I imported iPhoto back from Time Machine, on or about the last time I knew I had all the movies, it appears that none of the movies imported. Am I missing something or are the movies a total loss at this point? Is it possible to sift through Time Machine in order to locate the movies?

Thank you in advance...

J