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Hi all :D
I am stuck with 3 iMovie projects on the go which are taking up
huge space on my MBP HD, can I literally ‘copy’ the ‘Library’ file on to an
external, and then copy back over in the future and all will be preserved?
Thanks so much :D
The projects in the iMovie app itself take up very little space. They are composed of thumbnails of very tiny size, that refer to the original media stored in the iMovie library.
So, yes, you can copy or move your iMovie library to an external drive, that has adequate space, and that is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or APFS. Keep your iMovie app on your internal drive. It will access the library on the external drive. No need to copy back and forth. Then you can have projects as large as you want. All of the media will be stored in the iMovie library on the external drive.
Before you copy your iMovie library to an external drive you should first consolidate the library media. Select the library's name in the iMovie media side bar and do an Edit/Consolidate Library Media. That will insure that all of the media in your library will carry over to the external drive. Same with moving projects from library to library. Before moving the project click on its icon in the project browser screen and do Edit/Consolidate Project Media.
Here's an Apple help link that explains how to manage libraries and projects:
https://help.apple.com/imovie/mac/10.1/#/mov3fa25bae7
-- Rich
The projects in the iMovie app itself take up very little space. They are composed of thumbnails of very tiny size, that refer to the original media stored in the iMovie library.
So, yes, you can copy or move your iMovie library to an external drive, that has adequate space, and that is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or APFS. Keep your iMovie app on your internal drive. It will access the library on the external drive. No need to copy back and forth. Then you can have projects as large as you want. All of the media will be stored in the iMovie library on the external drive.
Before you copy your iMovie library to an external drive you should first consolidate the library media. Select the library's name in the iMovie media side bar and do an Edit/Consolidate Library Media. That will insure that all of the media in your library will carry over to the external drive. Same with moving projects from library to library. Before moving the project click on its icon in the project browser screen and do Edit/Consolidate Project Media.
Here's an Apple help link that explains how to manage libraries and projects:
https://help.apple.com/imovie/mac/10.1/#/mov3fa25bae7
-- Rich
Be aware that external drives typically fail after 3-4 years. For that matter, iMovie libraries also can fail even if stored on an internal drive. Just recently one of my 3 year old external drives started throwing off "Disc not Properly Ejected" messages every hour or so, even when I had not been using the drive. In the morning I would see 5 or 6 such messages on my desktop. That's a tell tale sign that the disc may be failing. So I changed it out for a new external drive. I was lucky this time. I once had an occasion when the drive was working just fine, and then suddenly refused to open.
So always safest to have two external back up drives and keep double backups of your iMovie libraries and other data that you want to keep, such as your Photos library. One of the drives can be a drive dedicated solely to a Time Machine backup. That way if your iMovie library or Photos library fails it can be restored to an earlier point in time before the failure occurred.
-- Rich
Thanks Rich, I will defo use 2 drives to back up and I will save out the actual movie file as an MP4 so if it all goes wrong, I could re-create to that template. Mind, that would be hard work!
Cheers :D
Rich, you're a legend :D Cheers for advice !
😊 Thank you for the kind sentiments.
-- Rich
Backing up iMovie files to an external HD
