Does the iMovie project files contain the actual clips in the project itself or does it refer only to the locations of the clips I have chosen for the project and not the actual clips My Macbook Pro HD is running out of space. If I move the iMovie events and projects to an external HD, will that destroy my iMovie projects if the iMovie projects refer only to the locations of the original clips and I have moved them to another location to an external HD?
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Jim
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iMovie events and projects relationships
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The Project stores data about the editing and sequence in your project. The Event stores the actual video media. So the Event is usually the much larger portion of your project, assuming you use one Event per Project like I do. Some people take video clips from multiple Events for one project.
Anyway, you can easily move them between hard drives. The way to do it properly is within iMovie.
Look at the Event browser. It is the list of events on the left side of the Event clips.
Click on the hard drive icon next to "Event Library." This arranges the events by drive, and should show all of your connected drives.
You can now drag and drop the events between drives in that list. But the important thing to remember is that plain drag and drop COPIES the Event. You want to to Command+Drag and Drop so it moves the event an maintains the links to your project.
So Gary, what is a good archiving strategy if you really only want to keep the finished project? I have a bunch of typical family home movies, they're stable, they're short, and I don't see myself doing more with them in iMovie in the future. I think I just want to save them as movies, mp4s, or Quicktime or whatever, and have them available for showing as necessary. And where should I store them, in iTunes? in movies? I don't want multiples of these huge files showing up as they seem to do in Finder/movies as well as iTunes and even iPhoto where I guess I downloaded some of the clips originally. Yes, you can see that I have a mess. The bottom line/end result is that I would ideally like a single location to store my home movies, and then I will diligently continue my whole drive backup procedure as insurance. Where should the one final copy of a movie go, and in what form? Complication: SOMEtimes I may want to share one of my home movies with someone else, or e-mail it, or YouTube it. What format for saving and where to save each format?
Just export (Share) them at the highest quality you can, using iMovie's default Share options. Check the exported file to make sure you are happy with it. Then delete the event and project. Store them in iTunes if you like. Or, just put them in a folder.