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Transferring photos or videos from Photos 3 to iMovie 10?

Is there an easy way to transfer photos or videos from Photos 3 to iMovie 10? something that doesn't involve exporting to desktop and importing into iMovie. These are both Apple products. There should be a simple drag and drop option between the two. Is there?

MacBook

Posted on Nov 9, 2019 1:38 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 9, 2019 3:03 PM

For the Photos item to appear in the side bar the Photos app library must be designated as the system library in the Photos app General System Preferences. Check the General Photos app preferences and make sure that the “designate as Photos system library” box is selected (grayed out). If it isn’t grayed out, then select it and close and open iMovie. Now see if the Photos item appears in the iMovie sidebar.


— Rich

6 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 9, 2019 3:03 PM in response to this_is_supposed_to_be_easy

For the Photos item to appear in the side bar the Photos app library must be designated as the system library in the Photos app General System Preferences. Check the General Photos app preferences and make sure that the “designate as Photos system library” box is selected (grayed out). If it isn’t grayed out, then select it and close and open iMovie. Now see if the Photos item appears in the iMovie sidebar.


— Rich

Nov 10, 2019 8:25 AM in response to Rich839

Adding to my previous posts, with Photos 4 one can drag directly from the Photos app into iMovie. I'm not sure but I seem to remember that with Photos 3 you first had to drag or import the photo to the desktop and then from there drag it into iMovie, unless you used iMovie's link to the Photos library via the Photos item in the iMovie project media sidebar.


-- Rich

Nov 12, 2019 7:29 PM in response to Rich839

Thank you Rich. Your posts were really helpful. I forgot about designating the photo library as my system library. I think I skipped that option when we had to switch from iPhoto to Photo app some years ago (that was frustrating...). I have too many photos to put into one photo library so I create photo libraries for each year. Maybe I should make the current year's library the "system library" so it can be more functional. I forget now why I didn't do that at the time. Will look into it. Thanks again!

Transferring photos or videos from Photos 3 to iMovie 10?

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