iMovie Storage and Editing Across Two Devices

[SPJones]

Hi folks. I’m newish to using iMovie and have some videos I’d like to edit. However, my 2020 MacBook Air only has 256GB internal storage. The videos I have total around 500GB.

At present, they are stored on an old 2013 iMac running Catalina I use for storage and a couple of other basic things.

I'd like to use iMovie on my MacBook Air to edit the videos but still store them on the iMac. Is this possible? If so, how?

Thanks!

 

[IJustWannaTalk]

Is buying an external hard drive not possible?

As iMovie usually copies the imported footage into its own folder, you'd be limited by networking speeds, would could really slow down any editing process.
That being said, moving and symbolically linking the Movie folder would likely do the trick, but I wouldn't recommend it from your iMac, unless your networking speed is pretty fast.

 

[SPJones]

Is buying an external hard drive not possible?

As iMovie usually copies the imported footage into its own folder, you'd be limited by networking speeds, would could really slow down any editing process.
That being said, moving and symbolically linking the Movie folder would likely do the trick, but I wouldn't recommend it from your iMac, unless your networking speed is pretty fast.

I thought about an external drive but was worried that iMovie would try storing the video on the MBA's disk rather than on the external one. Can that be changed?

Re: networking speed - could I use an ethernet cable to transfer between the two MBA and iMac?

 

[pacmania1982]

I wouldn't recommend doing this over WiFi!! Do it via ethernet. You'd need a USB to Ethernet adapter for the MacBook Air. You also can't just use a regular Ethernet cable if you don't use something like a hub or switch. You'd need an Ethernet cross over cable.

You'd have to specify an IP address of the iMac and then do the same for the MBA. Once done, you could open up your iMac's hard drive from your MacBook Air in the Finder after you enable File Sharing in Settings. It will show up as a network drive on your MacBook Air. Open iMovie for the first time and then immediately quit it. It will create a new iMovie library file in your Movies folder. Drag this to your iMac's hard drive and put it in a folder. You could then open iMovie and there's an option to switch libraries in the File menu and then navigate to your iMac's hard drive and find the library file.

The next question I have is what kind of drive is in the iMac? If it's not an SSD then you're not going to have a good time. But saying that, editing iMovie over the network isn't going to be fun either.

External SSDs are relatively cheap and you could pick a Crucial drive for about £60 ($70) which would be infinitely less complicated than my suggestion above. You would plug that into your MacBook Air via USB and, open iMovie, let it create the library, immediately quit it, then go to your Movies folder and move over all the iMovie stuff to the new external SSD. The next time you open iMovie you could switch to the library on your external SSD via the open another library from the File menu.

You might also find that buying an Ethernet cross over cable (or cross over adapters) aren't cost effective. Plus with an external hard drive, you can move it more easily between machines. Even slower SSDs are in the 500MB/s speeds where as with gigabit Ethernet that's build in, you're looking at 100MB/s perhaps a little over.

 

[SPJones]

I wouldn't recommend doing this over WiFi!! Do it via ethernet. You'd need a USB to Ethernet adapter for the MacBook Air. You also can't just use a regular Ethernet cable if you don't use something like a hub or switch. You'd need an Ethernet cross over cable.

You'd have to specify an IP address of the iMac and then do the same for the MBA. Once done, you could open up your iMac's hard drive from your MacBook Air in the Finder after you enable File Sharing in Settings. It will show up as a network drive on your MacBook Air. Open iMovie for the first time and then immediately quit it. It will create a new iMovie library file in your Movies folder. Drag this to your iMac's hard drive and put it in a folder. You could then open iMovie and there's an option to switch libraries in the File menu and then navigate to your iMac's hard drive and find the library file.

The next question I have is what kind of drive is in the iMac? If it's not an SSD then you're not going to have a good time. But saying that, editing iMovie over the network isn't going to be fun either.

External SSDs are relatively cheap and you could pick a Crucial drive for about £60 ($70) which would be infinitely better than my suggestion above. You would plug that into your MacBook Air via USB and, open iMovie, let it create the library, immediately quit it, then go to your Movies folder and move over all the iMovie stuff to the new external SSD. The next time you open iMovie you could switch to the library on your external SSD via the open another library from the File menu.

You might also find that buying an Ethernet cross over cable (or cross over adapters) aren't cost effective. Plus with an external hard drive, you can move it more easily between machines. Even slower SSDs are in the 500MB/s speeds where as with gigabit Ethernet that's build in, you're looking at 100MB/s perhaps a little over.

Thanks for the detailed response Will that work across different Mac OS? The MBA is running Sequoia while the iMac has last update Catalina.

I already have a USB-C/Ethernet adaptor for my MBA as I need to use a wired connection for extended Zoom calls, but didn't realise this would require another type of cable altogether.

I fitted an SSD in the old iMac a few years ago, so speed at that side isn't a big problem.

However, I'll probably do the sensible thing (and stop trying to be tight-fisted) and just go get a new external SSD. Currently using an old rescued HDD from a 2009 laptop as my TimeMachine drive, so might look for a buy-one-get-the-second-discounted deal!

Thanks again!

 

[pacmania1982]

It would depend on how the iMac connects to your network - is it WiFi or Ethernet? If it's Ethernet into a hub/switch then you should be fine. If you're plugging in an Ethernet cable from the MBA into the iMac then yes you would need a cross over cable.

You're fine to do this across various versions of macOS. So that shouldn't be a stumbling block.

Save yourself the headache and get an external SSD

 

[IJustWannaTalk]

I thought about an external drive but was worried that iMovie would try storing the video on the MBA's disk rather than on the external one. Can that be changed?

Re: networking speed - could I use an ethernet cable to transfer between the two MBA and iMac?

Yes, with the symbolic link method.