iMovie 6 woes

[MattG]

iMovie 6 is really starting to get on my nerves.

Has anyone else noticed that with this new "non-destructive editing" feature that they've added, that if you:

A. Trim down a clip to just the portion you want,
B. Use the sliders to highlight the part of the clip you want, then do a "copy" and "paste" into a new clip
or,
C. Copy a section of a clip and paste it into a new iMovie project,

iMovie doesn't actually change the size of the clip? It only *shows* the part you cropped it down to, but the rest of the clip is still physically there on the hard drive, and it's not in the trash.

Someone else, please try this and tell me I'm not crazy. Import 10 minutes of video into iMovie. See how much space it takes up. Crop it to only 5 minutes of the clip, "copy and paste" it into a new iMovie project, and see how big it is. It's the same size, even though it's only half as long! How do you stop iMovie from doing this??? I'm working on these projects where I'm copying and pasting portions of clips, and they're starting to take up massive amounts of space! I've got one project that has about 8 minutes worth of total footage in it, and it's taking up over 15GB on the hard drive. ?!?

 

[Danksi]

iMovie 6 is really starting to get on my nerves.

Has anyone else noticed that with this new "non-destructive editing" feature that they've added, that if you:

A. Trim down a clip to just the portion you want,
B. Use the sliders to highlight the part of the clip you want, then do a "copy" and "paste" into a new clip
or,
C. Copy a section of a clip and paste it into a new iMovie project,

iMovie doesn't actually change the size of the clip? It only *shows* the part you cropped it down to, but the rest of the clip is still physically there on the hard drive, and it's not in the trash.

Someone else, please try this and tell me I'm not crazy. Import 10 minutes of video into iMovie. See how much space it takes up. Crop it to only 5 minutes of the clip, "copy and paste" it into a new iMovie project, and see how big it is. It's the same size, even though it's only half as long! How do you stop iMovie from doing this??? I'm working on these projects where I'm copying and pasting portions of clips, and they're starting to take up massive amounts of space! I've got one project that has about 8 minutes worth of total footage in it, and it's taking up over 15GB on the hard drive. ?!?

The final movie, once you've rendered it, should be smaller though right?

I assume 'crop' will discard the bits of the clip you don't want as they end up in the trash - though the trash it still saved along with the project file.

 

[MattG]

The final movie, once you've rendered it, should be smaller though right?

I assume 'crop' will discard the bits of the clip you don't want as they end up in the trash - though the trash it still saved along with the project file.

Typically 'crop' would discard the bits I don't want and put them in the trash, but that doesn't happen. They go away from view, but they're still physically there. Nothing in the trash, file size stays the same.

It's not my computer -- I've got one at home and three at work, and they all do the same thing.

 

[Danksi]

Typically 'crop' would discard the bits I don't want and put them in the trash, but that doesn't happen. They go away from view, but they're still physically there. Nothing in the trash, file size stays the same.

It's not my computer -- I've got one at home and three at work, and they all do the same thing.

This rings a bell. If you close iMovie and then re-open the project, does it ask you whether you want to delete the trash content?

 

[MattG]

This rings a bell. If you close iMovie and then re-open the project, does it ask you whether you want to delete the trash content?

Unfortunately, no.

 

[Applespider]

Didn't this change in iMovie 5? I seem to recall a big chunk about it in David Pogue's Missing Manual and that there were tradeoffs either way as a result. The bad news was iMovie projects stayed enormous since it wasn't really cropping. The good news was that you could change your mind. I'd have liked somewhere in the middle... keep them unless you specifically tell it to dump them!

The only way to cut down your 10min clip to 5min and get rid of the other 5 minutes is to export that clip as DV and reimport it - then delete the original 10 minute clip and keep the 5 minute one.

 

[Arnaud]

Didn't this change in iMovie 5? I seem to recall a big chunk about it in David Pogue's Missing Manual and that there were tradeoffs either way as a result. The bad news was iMovie projects stayed enormous since it wasn't really cropping. The good news was that you could change your mind. I'd have liked somewhere in the middle... keep them unless you specifically tell it to dump them!

The only way to cut down your 10min clip to 5min and get rid of the other 5 minutes is to export that clip as DV and reimport it - then delete the original 10 minute clip and keep the 5 minute one.

I think I had something similar happen in iMovie 5, actually. I never really understood when some portions of a clip would really disappear and some wouldn't. Just got iMovie 6, but I haven't had to try it yet. I'll keep that in mind.

 

[MattG]

Didn't this change in iMovie 5? I seem to recall a big chunk about it in David Pogue's Missing Manual and that there were tradeoffs either way as a result. The bad news was iMovie projects stayed enormous since it wasn't really cropping. The good news was that you could change your mind. I'd have liked somewhere in the middle... keep them unless you specifically tell it to dump them!

The only way to cut down your 10min clip to 5min and get rid of the other 5 minutes is to export that clip as DV and reimport it - then delete the original 10 minute clip and keep the 5 minute one.

Yeah, I'll have to try doing that next time. What a pain in the ass, though.