Help! My videos are gone!

[lia77]

Hello!

Some time ago I had a bunch of videos in video imovie library. Then because of lack of space on my note book I moved my imovie projects to an external hard drive and now I can´t seem to open them again!! Does anyone have an idea of what might have happened? I read on the internet something about files being corrupted whe you move them, could that be it?

I would be very thankful for help!!

All the best!
Krystallia

[spinnerlys]

What message does appear when you open them?

And corruption can happen, but very, very seldom.

[rjphoto]

First things first.

What version of iMovie are you using?

How big are the files on the external drive? (ie: if they are not very big you may have moved the wrong files and deleted the original... that would be a problem.)

[lia77]

Hi both of you!
Thanks for taking time to reply to my problem!

I have imovie 7.1.1

And about the files:

They are saved in a folder with imovie projects. When I click on them nothing happens whatsoever! When I check information about the file it says on one for example: 2.8MB.
The videos clips that I have are usually very short, maybe this one is like 2-5 min or so, could this be ok??

God I would never forgive myself if I deleted the wrong files:-(

[spinnerlys]

2.8 MB for 2-5 min video clips doesn't sound okay.

What camera and setting did you use for filming and capturing to iMovie?


If it is a DV camera and a DV setting, a 2-5 min clip should be 443 to 1109 MB big.

[Courtaj]

You may have moved the project file and not the clips themselves. iMovie makes a project file which contains information about which clips you've used and what edits you've made, but stores the imported clips elsewhere.

Is it possible to try moving the project file(s) from the external back from whence it (they) came and try again? This might be a method of last resort, to be tried when all else fails (including better suggestions from others!).

[lia77]

Hi and thanks for responding!

I dont remember the type of camera, i think it was panasonic dv something, those with small tapes.( it is like 4 years old i think)

I have a very bad feeling about this, and i think it is probably so that I took away the wrong files then..

I have some of them uploaded to youtube though, is there a way to get them back from there? ( that would be with bad quality then I guess, but maybe better than nothing)

My Dreamdayproject is definitely turning into a nightmare:(

Thanks all for trying to help though!

[Courtaj]

In your home folder on your internal drive (usually identified by your name), go to Movies -> iMovie Events. Are there any folders in there? If so, when you open them, are there any .mov files inside? If you play them, are they they the "lost" files?

[lia77]

Nope, nothing, no events or anything.
They just exist in my external drive but nothing happens when i click on them..
so probably as the guy earlier said, they are not the files...

It doesn´t look too good:-(
But thanks!

[Courtaj]

Well, I suppose the only thing left to do if you haven't done it already is use Spotlight to search for all .mov files on both the internal and external drives, and see if it locates any of the lost ones.

[xStep]

In your Movies folder are up to three folders for iMovie 08/09; "iMovie Events", "iMovie Projects", and possibly "iMovie Sharing". As far as I know, that last two can't be moved or have alternate versions. On the other hand "iMovie Events" can have an alternative.

What you can do is create a folder named "iMovie Events" on an external drive at the top level of the drive. You can then use iMovie or even the Finder to move the events content there. This folder is where iMovie 08/09 writes the imported files to and is the consumer of your space.

So, if what you did was move the folders from your local "iMovie Events" folder to a random place on the external drive, you should be able to create that folder on the external drive and drag the sub-folders to that new location, start iMovie, and all should be fine.

If you also moved the project folders, then put them back into your "Movies/iMovie Projects" folder.

Worse case scenario is that you have to reimport the clips from where you placed them. They would be in the top level of each event folder.

[spinnerlys]

Btw, how big is your iMovie folder (the one you moved and the one you still have under Users > You > Movies)?

iMovie stores its video clips in one big ass library file, like iPhoto, which you can access via right click > show package contents.

You could also use a software called WhatSize to scan your drives for big folders which might contain your video files.

If you don't find them, you can still re-capture them, if you have the miniDV tapes and your project file.