Hi, I have a question about importing files into iMovie09. I have an external hard drive with a lot of footage on it. When I import some of those files, it re-creates them on my computer’s hard drive. I thought it would only do that if I was importing from a camera since the files wouldn’t exist yet. But if the files are already on a hard drive, why does it need to create the same files again? Am I doing something unnecessary? I’m worried that it’s taking up a lot of unnecessary space. Thanks!
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Bobby
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Yes, it puts them into “events” for you to work with them. You can import them into events on any hard drive — not just your internal one. So you can have it copy them into the events folder on your external drive. That still gives you two copies of them. But you can select “copy” instead of “move” when importing them, so you only have one copy — just in your events folder instead of in the original location.
Another technique is to simply take the movies you need at the time to make one video. Copy them into your iMovie Events on your internal drive (which will be faster to work with than an external drive anyway). Then remove those events when you are done with the video.
I noticed that when I deleted the event files from my internal hard drive, I was still able to watch my project in iMovie. How is it able to play it? Also, what would happen if I deleted the files from the external hard drive, but left the ones on the internal?
Not sure. Were you able to edit it? Perhaps you were viewing the finished project? Hard to tell without seeing it first-hand.