iMovie: Re-importing missing files?

[getrealbro]

How do you re-import missing files AND keep the adjustments previously made in iMovie e.g. trim, crop, sound, splits, etc.?

I recently discovered that one of my iMovie Libraries (created in 2014-15) has not survived the transition from iMovie 9 -> 10 and Mavericks -> El Capitan -> Mojave unscathed. Specifically, almost all of the media is now missing from the project. And even when I re-import the files, iMovie only allows me to “replace” the original file. So all of the adjustments I made in iMovie e.g. trim, crop, sound, splits, etc. are lost.

I suspect that this iMovie Library was created by importing the media/files from the then current Photos Library and only existed in the iMovie Library as links. But those links are now lost/broken. I still have all the media/files in a Photos library but it has a new name, location, etc..

Is there a way to find out where iMovie expects to find the original media/files, so I can recreate the scene of the crime?

Thanks in Advance — GetRealBro

 

[getrealbro]

In case you’re curious…I was able to re-import the media files into all but 2 of the 70 projects in the iMovie Library, retaining almost all of the previous adjustments: trim, crop, etc.. BUT… it wasn’t easy.

In the end, I had to recreate the scene of the crime. This meant retrieving and placing a fresh copy of the iMovie Library, the 2014 and 2015 iPhotos Libraries (250 GB) and the iMovie Events in the EXACT location that they had been in 2014-2015 when I created the iMovie Library. I used the Project plist in each project’s folder, which contains the path to the original media, to know where to put these libraries/files/folders. Luckily I keep “archival” Time Machine drives roughly every year. So finding the right stuff wasn’t easy, but it was possible

My iMovie Library had two kinds of projects. In the majority, the media was linked from an iPhotos Library. But a few had media that had been loaded into an iMovie Event. The method of fixing these projects is quite different. OS I spit the original iMove Library into two libraries.

Once all the historical libraries/folder/files were in place, I manually updated each project one at a time. BTW you only get once chance to update each project. So I made sure the required files were in the right place for each project before attempting its update.

The easiest projects to update were the ones with the original media in one of the iPhotos Libraries. I just double clicked the project and iMovie would retrieve the media. The Projects with media that that had been placed in an iMove Event were more difficult. After loading the Events into the Updated Project Media I had to figure out which media went with which project and “replace” the missing media with the “updated” media.

GetRealBro