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the imovie timeline is missing after transfer to final cut pro

how can i recover the imovie timeline that's missing after transferring a project from imovie to final cut pro. all the media (still photos, video clips, audio files) is there but the painstaking work* on the timeline plus all the many associated titles are not there.


the timeline portion is blank... help... please...


*imovie was crashing left and right, which is why i decided to try the transfer to final cut pro.

iMac with Retina 5K display, macOS 10.14

Posted on Aug 11, 2020 4:13 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 11, 2020 9:32 AM

Hi, Llkfrin,


Crashing can be caused by a number of things. You might have some corruption in the iMovie app, or the iMovie library, or a conflict on your computer, or in your user account, or possibly a hardware issue. It also might be related to just this one project.


Take a look at the diagnostic procedures that I listed in the thread linked below to see if you can isolate the problem.


https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250375859?page=1


Meanwhile, try looking in the iMovie backups folder on your Mac and see if you can open iMovie in a backup library and retrieve your project. To get to the iMovie Backups folder, follow this file path from the Finder menu:


Go/Home/Library/Containers/com.apple.iMovieApp/Data/Library/Caches/iMovieBackups


When you get there you will see a list of previous backups of your iMovie library.  Click on one dated just before

your issue started.  iMovie will open in that library.   Navigate to your projects browser (where your projects are displayed as icons) and see if your project is intact.


-- Rich

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3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 11, 2020 9:32 AM in response to Llkfrin

Hi, Llkfrin,


Crashing can be caused by a number of things. You might have some corruption in the iMovie app, or the iMovie library, or a conflict on your computer, or in your user account, or possibly a hardware issue. It also might be related to just this one project.


Take a look at the diagnostic procedures that I listed in the thread linked below to see if you can isolate the problem.


https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250375859?page=1


Meanwhile, try looking in the iMovie backups folder on your Mac and see if you can open iMovie in a backup library and retrieve your project. To get to the iMovie Backups folder, follow this file path from the Finder menu:


Go/Home/Library/Containers/com.apple.iMovieApp/Data/Library/Caches/iMovieBackups


When you get there you will see a list of previous backups of your iMovie library.  Click on one dated just before

your issue started.  iMovie will open in that library.   Navigate to your projects browser (where your projects are displayed as icons) and see if your project is intact.


-- Rich

Aug 11, 2020 7:56 PM in response to Rich839

Rich,


Thanks for your response.


I had already tried steps 1 and 2 from your previous troubleshooting post, so decided to try step 3, plus something I was thinking about, which is to copy the timeline only, to a new project (in this case, in a completely different library) cuz iMovie started crashing when I dragged in a photoshop file (a semi-opaque rectangular shape to put behind text) into the media portion of the project and would crash again whenever I tried to click on it to delete it but it's not on the timeline so my hope is that the new project devoid of all media may be ok. I couldn't copy-and-paste the timeline to Final Cut Pro, but could do so in iMovie. So far so good. Fingers crossed...


Thanks again.



the imovie timeline is missing after transfer to final cut pro

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