iMovie 09: Saving Your Work
This guide will give you step-by-step instructions to choosing where your iMovie work will be saved.
Useful Information
When you start working with iMovie, it will automatically create two folders in your Movie folder, within your Home folder:
iMovie Events is where your video clips are saved. These are organised into sub-folders (events).
iMovie Projects is where your projects are saved. A project is like a playlist for your video clips, saving all your edits.
A project references, or links to, video clips within your iMovie Events folder. If you delete these clips, the project won't work.
Your Movies folder is stored within your network folder, which appears on your Desktop, named with your user name.
You are given between 3-5 GB of space in your network folder. If you capture DV-PAL video from a mini-DV tape, this is enough to store 13-22 minutes of video (220 MB per minute).
The purpose of this guide is to show you how to change where your iMovie Events and iMovie Projects folders are located, so you can save a longer duration of video if required.
Guide
- If you already have iMovie Events and iMovie Projects folders in your Movies folder, you need to copy them to the jfDfsWSAProjects$ drive. If you don't have these folders, skip to step 6. Follow these steps before opening iMovie. You only need to do this once.
- Open a Finder window (press cmd-N) and navigate to your Movies folder, inside your Home folder.
- Double-click the icon for the WSA Projects drive on the Desktop and navigate to your folder (named with your user name).
- Select the iMovie Events and iMovie Projects folders and drag them to your jfDfsWSAProjects$ folder to copy them:
- You can now delete the original iMovie Events and iMovie Projects folders from your Movies folder by dragging them to the Trash.
- If you did not already have the iMovie folders to copy, create them now in your jfDfsWSAProjects$ folder (press shift-cmd-N) and name them iMovie Events and iMovie Projects. They must have these exact names, with capitals, or it will not work.
- Select the new iMovie Events and iMovie Projects folders. Right-click them and choose Make Alias:
- Select the iMovie Events and iMovie Projects alias folders and drag them to your Movies folder to copy them:
- Now rename the copied alias folders (select and press Enter) to get rid of the alias in their names:
- You can now open iMovie and it will find the events and projects saved in your jfDfsWSAProjects$ folder.
FAQ's
Q: Why do I need to follow this guide?
A: You only need to if you want to overcome the space limitation of your network folder and work with a longer duration of video. These steps are necessary because iMovie will only recognise folders in your Movies folder or on the root of an external hard disk. Creating aliases overcomes this limitation.
Q: What's an alias?
A: An alias the is Mac equivalent of a shortcut on a PC. It basically points the computer to the location of the files or folder.
Q: Can I store my iMovie work on a USB memory stick?
A: Yes, you can use the same steps as above to move your iMovie folders to a USB memory stick instead and create aliases from there. It's only worth doing if you have a large memory stick (>4GB).
Q: Can I store my iMovie work on an external USB/Firewire Hard Drive?
A: Yes. iMovie will recognise an iMovie Events or iMovie Projects folder stored on the root of the hard drive, without using aliases. If you want to store them within another folder on the drive, then you must use the same steps as above. The drive must be formatted as FAT32 or Mac OS (not NTFS).