I do a lot of family video editing with Apple’s iMovie and find it works great. Except it’s filling up my disk and I need to copy it to an external drive. I tried just dragging folders, but then I can no longer access the older projects and events. Is there a smart way to move data onto a secondary or backup disk drive in iMovie 11 so I can still work on the projects?
As everyone who works with video has had to learn at some point, movie files take up a lot of disk space. A LOT of disk space. In fact, almost 2/3 of the space on my main video editing Mac system is consumed by MOV files, generally raw input data from video cameras. Hundreds of gigabytes. And with my workflow, at least, once I edit and publish a video — on my AskDaveTaylor YouTube channel — I never go back and work on it again, so I don’t really need to keep the files at all. Still, once in a while something resurfaces or there’s a typo identified or similar and a second edit proves necessary.
We’ll be looking at iMovie for this particular how-to but it’s really the same whether you’re using a version of iMovie or Final Cut Pro X or similar: there’s a way that’s part of the editing program to copy or move projects so that they work just fine from the external drive (or in a different version of the program if you plug the drive into a different computer, of course) and there’s a way that, well, makes a lot more work for you.
I know this because I tend to hobble together solutions, so my default approach is to just go into the file system and move folders around.
In that case, I’d be starting here:
You can see that My Passport Pro is already plugged in and ready to receive files [see my review of the terrific Western Digital 4TB external Thunderbolt drive] but if I just drag and drop things, they’ll copy and be able to be deleted off the main computer, but it’s a huge pain to work with them later, and it’s easy to get iMovie quite confused when folders show up and vanish from your “Movies” folder. Not good.
Instead, fire up iMovie 11 and then look closely in the Projects window for the external drive. It’ll be a pretty tiny line near the bottom if you don’t already have one or more project copied over.
Then click and drag a project from your existing list onto the secondary disk drive, like so:
Here I’ dragging the “Walmart Family Mobile Plan” video onto the “My Passport Pro”.
Because I just clicked and dragged, the following window will pop up:
Useful. But where this becomes way more interesting is if you click and hold the Control key while you’re dragging.
Instead of copying everything, you’ll be presented with the much more useful pair of options:
There ya go. In this case I click on the latter option, Move project and Events and after a few moments (Thunderbolt = fast. Good!) everything’s copied onto the backup drive in exactly the right format that it’ll remain in the iMovie project list whenever the drive is plugged in. Empty the trash to get rid of the old files that are now redundant and you’re done.
Not too bad, once you learn about the Control-drag secret technique, eh?
Thank you, Dave! Enjoy your Grande Soy Chai – well worth it because I have made a big mess of my hard drive AND my external drive previously not knowing how to move versus copy the Events. I bought a new drive just for my Events, tried what you suggested and I wanted to give you a big hug. For those of us who still remember a world with no cell phones, and thus, struggle with technology, finding simple, clear advice is very much appreciated. I will be back to browse through some of your other articles to learn more, after I finish freeing up my poor hard drive from all of this video! Take care!
not sure your method is going to work for those of us with iMovie10 (which seems to be the successor to iMovie11, bizarrely)
instead, i just found THIS way of doing things which worked perfectly and is very simple:
1) Click file, then open library, new. Name the library, and create it in the location of your choice.
2) Go to the projects tab in the main imovie window. Ctrl and click a project you would like to move. Select move to library or copy to library from the drop down menu. The new library you created should be listed, click that and your project should move/copy to the new location.
hope this helps those who, like me, were struggling like mad with this issue and who weren’t getting anywhere with your method (which i suppose is for the absurdly named version 11 which preceded version 10 – doh)
😉
Though I manage to be productive with it, I’m not that familiar with iMovie, I’m stuck at your first step:
“… fire up iMovie 11 and then look closely in the Projects window for the external drive. It’ll be a pretty tiny line near the bottom if you don’t already have one or more project copied over.”
I opened iMovie (10.1.2), and clicked on the “Projects” tab at the top. All I see are large thumbnails of my projects, no ‘timeline’ type views that you posted, and certainly no external drive shows (it is formatted in OS X Extended (Journaled). I don’t see any View options that allow me to see what you show. Can you dumb the first step down a little? 🙂 Thanks
Ah, yes, iMovie has lots of different user interfaces depending on what version you run. Apple did a completely redesign between iMovie 9.x and iMovie 10.x. 🙁
Dave,
I believe you made a mistake. It’s the Command key you should press, not the Control key, in order to move both project and events.
Jim
Jim, experiment. There’s a big difference between a Command-drag and a Control-drag: One’s a “move” and the other is a “copy”…
When I get my movies. to the external hard drive can I then take them back to imovie later if needed.
Yes, just make sure you save the Events and the Project!
I have iMovie ’11 and I don’t see my external drive anywhere on the screen, at all. It’s showing up in Finder, but I just don’t see it on the iMovie screen. What am I doing wrong?
Make sure your external drive is formatted as MAC OS Extended (Journaled). For more information, check out the following article.
https://support.apple.com/kb/ph2302?locale=en_US
JB
Fantastic advice, Dave. Used it right away and bought you a cuppa Chai.
One thing: The control key didn’t work for me (Mac) but the command key did. Strangely, it didn’t always bring up the move menu, but if I let go of the keys and retried it, it eventually did bring up the move menu. I wonder if I have a sticky key or something.
I look forward to reading your email newsletter, which I’m signing up for next. Thanks for such a useful blog!
I’ve been having the exact same problem–most of the time the move menu does not come up. I find that if I quit iMovie and then reopen and try again that sometimes fixes the problem.
I also had the same thought, that maybe I had a faulty command key. Since I always use the left-hand command key, I tried using the right-hand key, but it didn’t work, either.
Hi Dave,
Thanks. But I don’t quite understand. The 2 screenshots you show are both the same:
regarding: “if you click and hold the Control key while you’re dragging. Instead of copying everything, you’ll be presented with the much more useful pair of options:”
Thanks,
Michael
Michael,
The screenshots are different. For the first it is “copy” the files, for the second it is “move” the files. The latter option relocates the project and clips to another location.
Hope this helps.
Great tip, I recently lost a bunch of movie files for not knowing this!
A question: Once you’ve moved the files to the external disk, can you then move them to a folder on that external disk?
Thanks!
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