iMovie Missing File

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Level 1

13 points

iMovie Missing File

I don't what Apple did to iMovie during 2022, but it is not nearly as reliable as it was when I created my annual family movie last year.

I am selecting video clips from my Photos library and dragging them into the iMovie Project Media area, so that I can them insert them into my editor timeline for the movie project. All of my clips look and play fine in my Photos library, but some (not all) of them, when I drag them into Project Media, show up as a giant question mark with "Missing File" and a message about reimporting them - which doesn't help.

Why are only some of my video clips behaving like this? Is there something broken with either my Photos library (I store all my photos and videos on iCloud)? Is it something broken with the iMovie library files? There seem to be a number of other users who have had this issue, but none of the situations or solutions I've found so far have been helpful for my situation.

Do I need to export all of these "broken" clips from my Photos library to individual MP4 files and then import the physical files into iMovie? (That's a highly inconvenient workaround, but it was my next idea to try if there's no quick fix.)

Thanks for any advice.

Posted on Jan 7, 2023 10:42 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Rich839

Level 8

47,730 points

Jan 7, 2023 12:26 PM in response to vikewings

Sometimes things can go awry in the digital world.

Try a few diagnostic things to see if you can shake out the problem.

Deleting Preferences

Open iMovie while holding down the Option and Command keys and select to delete preferences in the box that appears. iMovie will open in a new library. Reopen your old library to get back to your projects. Possibly you may need to reboot to set the changes. Deleting preferences is a safe procedure that will not cause data loss or disruption to your project.

Opening iMovie in a new library

Try opening iMovie in a new library. To do that, open iMovie while holding down

the Option key and then selecting to create a new library in the box that

appears.

Create a new project

Create a new project and try importing some of your troublesome media into the new project.

Safe Mode

You could also try booting up in Safe Mode and, after everything loads, immediately shut down and reboot in normal mode. Then see if iMovie works properly.

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

-- Rich

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Answer 2

Rich839

Level 8

47,730 points

Jan 7, 2023 12:51 PM in response to vikewings

Adding to my earlier post, if you have optimize storage selected for your iCloud Photos it is possible that some, but maybe not all, of your videos and photos are in the cloud and not downloaded to your physical Photos app library. If that's the case, iMovie will not be able to reference the cloud photos and hence the missing link notification. That might explain why only some of your vids are showing as missing in iMovie. iMovie will only reference the original media that is downloaded to your Photos app library. You might check to make sure that all of the videos that you are using in the project are in fact actually downloaded to the Photos app library.

Also, you should be able to drag any downloaded videos from the Photos app library directly into iMovie.

-- Rich

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iMovie Missing File

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