I moved my iTunes library as well as my video and pictures to an external drive. I got round the fact that iMovie wants to treat this drive as a camera and takes about 20 minutes to do something with it (I think index it in some way) by duplicating the required video clips and image files to my on-board drive. Now I have completed the video I want to add music. I cannot find a way of pointing the application to my music library. Do I have to do the same thing and copy the files locally?
If your 'new' iTunes library is the default that iTunes uses on start-up then iMovie should just access it through the Media viewer. I'm puzzled as to why iMovie doesn't like your external drive though I do find the current version of iMovie a little odd in the way that it insists on mixing all clips in together. There might be a support document on the subject?
Apple support does have guidelines on how to move an iTunes library - I'm sure you followed them (... if not, you could probably repeat the exercise).
Thanks Tony, I did the move according to suggested web knowledge and my devices start iTunes and connect to it OK and so does Lightroom as you saw in the demo I gave with music accompanying my Lightroom slideshow.
Others have had problems with external drives being shown as camera devices in iMovie and I got round the problem by moving files back to my on-board drive. As I had to export them from Lightroom as edited jpegs it wasn't too bad except I included images from my friends downloaded images and what with importing these in and out of Lightroom too and trying to keep them separate, the whole thing went bad once and I threw all the toys out of the pram.
iMovies seems to make another copy when it imports them - in the folder Movies>iMovie library>"name of project">Original media rather than just have a pointer to the file. This is annoying to say the least. Whereas I have 800Gbytes left on my external 2Tbyte drive I only have 80Gbytes left on my internal.
Incidentally my Seagate Ultra Slim 2TByte drive crashed but luckily I lost nothing due to Time Machine. Unfortunately I did not keep a receipt from PC World click and collect and I erased all my old emails from the server THE DAY BEFORE (see previous post - Am I Under Attack?). These things are sent to try us
I have got round the problem of the audio by doing the same: copying the mp3 files to my internal drive then importing them as a media file. Seems to work but is very time consuming especially experimenting with different audio files. A project that should last an evening has taken me a day. (Actually 2 days as a friend sent me some pictures after I'd completed the project once.)
Hi Rick. Yes, I think iMovie clings to the idea that it's simpler for the user if all the assets are copied into its own library. The is true, if naive, and you could then delete the originals ... but I wouldn't want to do that so you get cursed with two copies.
There is an Apple support page here that describes how to move the entire thing onto an external drive. I haven't tried it and you would clearly need a fast drive (USB3 at minimum which I expect your Seagate is) but it might help.
Thank you. Just tried this and all seems to work. I rather think that files will be duplicated inside the library and in their original position (I tend to keep the original video files inside their respective date folders with the still images)
Nevertheless it frees space on my on-board hard disc.
Rick Churchill 