iMovie 11 - cannot locate source clips, but I know they're there!

reverbfuzz

This seems to be a common occurrence, but it will not resolve. I have a project in iMovie on my Macbook Pro, and it shows me the yellow "!" triangle. When I holver the mouse over these clips, it says "Source clip is missing" and shows a star in a box icon.
I know those video clips are in my iMovie Event folder, and are not corrupt files, so PLEASE tell me how I resolve this! It's driving me insane.... I tried deleting the applist file in preferences as everyone on the net seems to suggest, but the problem is still there.
I also tried hovering the mouse over the yellow warning triangle, but that shows me nothing either.
I'm at my wits end with this! I need to complete this movie project, and don't want to lose the work I've done (fixing levels, cropping parts, etc) as there's a good few hours work in this.

ZENER

Are the original files on the internal drive or from an external disk ? Reading around it seems this problem isn't restricted to iMovie 11. There are some useful and somewhat successful suggestions here. I know the thread is old but the problem is identical to yours.

Ken

reverbfuzz

ZENER wrote: »

Are the original files on the internal drive or from an external disk ? Reading around it seems this problem isn't restricted to iMovie 11. There are some useful and somewhat successful suggestions here. I know the thread is old but the problem is identical to yours.

Ken

No, all from the internal drive. I moved everything over to another laptop and ran iMovie on that, but still the same. I had hope!
I saw that thread yesterday actually, though fixing paths in bbedit is a little beyond my know-how...

It's weird - the original footage IS there. I tried moving stuff into what seemed like the logical folders, but that didn't work either....
I tried right-clicking on the clip (see screenshot), but that hasn't shed much light. The source footage is the movie clip in the bottom right of the screenshot, so it does exist, I'm not crazy..!

muggyog

You say you know the original footage is there but according to the Event Library in your screen shot iMovie does not agree with you. You need to drag the missing clips back to the Library because all the Project file is a lookup table for your media. If iMovie loses the path to the media you get the warning triangle. You may have started the Project with your media in another location ( external drive, networkd server, USB stick, etc)

reverbfuzz

muggyog wrote: »

You say you know the original footage is there but according to the Event Library in your screen shot iMovie does not agree with you. You need to drag the missing clips back to the Library because all the Project file is a lookup table for your media. If iMovie loses the path to the media you get the warning triangle. You may have started the Project with your media in another location ( external drive, networkd server, USB stick, etc)

Yeah, I've tried that - I import them in again, but to no avail ... .they hay be slightly differently named, which concerns me (which would be why they're not recognized as the original files)

reverbfuzz

It doesn't even tell me the exact names of the missing clips. I was hoping to rename them if that was the case to 'trick' it. See the screenshot here - I click on the footage at the bottom, that's the footage that's 'missing' from my editing at the top. Argh! ;

macgabhs

I've had problems like this in iMovie when I've tried to add photos to a project from my aperture library. I worked around it by creating a slideshow in aperture and exporting that as a movie file which I could then import to iMovie. Not ideal but it worked.

muggyog

reverbfuzz wrote: »

Yeah, I've tried that - I import them in again, but to no avail ... .they hay be slightly differently named

Unfortunately due to the fact that iMovie is an entry level video editor application if it goes wrong there is a bit of work to fix it ( thats the problem with free stuff!).

As explained earlier, the project file is just a pointer to where the media is and this has gone 'bad' in your case. I did a little test on my own Mac ( which has iMovie09 ) and this is my method of sorting your problem.

I started a new project and imported a .mov file. This is where I put the file ( Users\admin\Movies).



Important Note: there is a second version of this file further down which iMovie created, so exact path is important.

I then deleted the .mov file and got this display.



Next I viewed the contents of the project file. You have to open first as it is a package file. Then use a text editor ( I used built in TextEditor ) to view the project file itself.



The text is a bit unformatted however you can see that the path to the missing file is there.



To fix the problem I put the exact same ( name) file back at the exact same level (place) and the yellow triangles went away.