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simontarr

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 4, 2006
414
0
England
Being new to macs, I've done something rather n00bish.

I've accidentally deleted the movies icon on the left pane in finder (the logo being green with the clacker board thing) I was trying to move the icon into my public folder, so others on the network at home could stream the videos.

I tried replacing the movies folder, but now all I have is the generic blue folder icon and Front Row now says I have no movies in my movies folder. Does anyone know how to get it back?? :eek:

If I can get it back, how do I have it so that all my movies are shared over the network but are also kept in the movies folder so front row can use them? So far, all it seems like I can do is have 2 copies of every movie- one in the public folder, the other in the movies folder.

Your help would be appreciated. Thank you
 
the icon actually represents a big folder that contain the application of iMovie, so when you moved the icon, you actually moved the whole application into your public folder.
application and movie can be stored at different locations, so now what you need to do is to move that icon back to your application folder, and save the movies in your public folder.
 
clevin said:
the icon actually represents a big folder that contain the application of iMovie, so when you moved the icon, you actually moved the whole application into your public folder.
application and movie can be stored at different locations, so now what you need to do is to move that icon back to your application folder, and save the movies in your public folder.

Geeze you're giving some dodgy information tonight....

The "Movies" icon in the left pane of the Finder is just a shortcut to the Movies folder in your Home folder in the Finder.

Open a Finder window, click on the icon on the left that looks like a house. Inside here you'll see a folder (blue with a green movie board thingy icon) - drag that to the Finder's sidebar.

To allow others using Front Row to view streamed movies, it's probably easiest to add your movies to iTunes and access them through there. You can add aliases to the folder where iTunes stores your videos and put them in your Movies folder so you don't have to open iTunes to watch a video.
 
Chundles said:
Geeze you're giving some dodgy information tonight....

The "Movies" icon in the left pane of the Finder is just a shortcut to the Movies folder in your Home folder in the Finder.

Open a Finder window, click on the icon on the left that looks like a house. Inside here you'll see a folder (blue with a green movie board thingy icon) - drag that to the Finder's sidebar.

To allow others using Front Row to view streamed movies, it's probably easiest to add your movies to iTunes and access them through there. You can add aliases to the folder where iTunes stores your videos and put them in your Movies folder so you don't have to open iTunes to watch a video.

Cheers Chundles. I'll try it now. :)
 
Hmmm...Just went into the home folder and theres no Movies logo shortcut there. I really have no idea what I've done with it.
 
simontarr said:
Cheers Chundles. I'll try it now. :)

Just as an aside, the folders in the Finder's Sidebar can't be moved around. You can't put a folder in there, navigate to a new folder and then drag the folder out of the Sidebar into the new location. They are just shortcuts - not proper aliases.

To move one folder into another, you have to drag and drop. Folders in the Finder are spring-loaded - they will open automatically if you hold a file or folder over the icon.
 
simontarr said:
Hmmm...Just went into the home folder and theres no Movies logo shortcut there. I really have no idea what I've done with it.


Hmm... That's odd...

I think you may have dropped it somewhere and now can't find it. If it's not in the Home folder, do a spotlight search for "Movies" and see what turns up.

Your Home Folder should look like this:

picture1dl1.png
 
Chundles said:
Hmm... That's odd...

I think you may have dropped it somewhere and now can't find it. If it's not in the Home folder, do a spotlight search for "Movies" and see what turns up.

Your Home Folder should look like this:

picture1dl1.png

Yeah I've tried a spotlight, but it's gone. I don't ever remember putting it into the trash, so I dont think ive properly deleted it. And I know I havent renamed it either.
 
simontarr said:
Yeah I've tried a spotlight, but it's gone. I don't ever remember putting it into the trash, so I dont think ive properly deleted it. And I know I havent renamed it either.

Have you tried a spotlight search for a movie that was in the folder? Sounds to me like you did something more than just drag the Movies shortcut out of the Sidebar. All that would have happened there would be a little puff of smoke. I just did the same thing, puff of smoke, put the Movies folder back in the Sidebar, no problems.

Try to remember EXACTLY what you did. Try a Spotlight search for a movie you know was in there.

Some little piece of information is missing here, we need all the info.
 
AH HA!

I just went into my home folder and thought "hmmm what if I just create a new folder and call it Movies" and voila! It created the folder with the green clacker board and put and icon straight into the finder sidebar.

Thanks for your help though Chundles
 
simontarr said:
AH HA!

I just went into my home folder and thought "hmmm what if I just create a new folder and call it Movies" and voila! It created the folder with the green clacker board and put and icon straight into the finder sidebar.

Thanks for your help though Chundles

Whale oil beef hooked!

Nice little tid-bit of info there Simon, cheers, now I'll know what to do if I manage to delete one of my folders in a drunken rampage one night.

Still try a spotlight search for a specific file though, the whole lot may still be there.
 
Chundles said:
Whale oil beef hooked!

Nice little tid-bit of info there Simon, cheers, now I'll know what to do if I manage to delete one of my folders in a drunken rampage one night.

Still try a spotlight search for a specific file though, the whole lot may still be there.

Well this whole incident happened about 5 days ago, and in all my confusion, I somehow managed to get rid of EVERYTHING in the movies folder. I had a normal movies folder located elsewhere for other things, and I tried mounting a shortcut into the finder sidebar. Instead of it falling into the sidebar, I dragged it ONTO the movie folder and it just overwrote everything in the proper green-iconed movies folder and just replaced it with my own movies folder. I had about 20 gigs of movies in there and it all went. I tried spotlighting, the trash everything but couldnt get it back. Naturally, I got rather pissed off so tried fixing it then gave up because I was annoyed!

PS. I wasnt drunk, unless you was taking the mick out of clevin lol
 
simontarr said:
Well this whole incident happened about 5 days ago, and in all my confusion, I somehow managed to get rid of EVERYTHING in the movies folder. I had a normal movies folder located elsewhere for other things, and I tried mounting a shortcut into the finder sidebar. Instead of it falling into the sidebar, I dragged it ONTO the movie folder and it just overwrote everything in the proper green-iconed movies folder and just replaced it with my own movies folder. I had about 20 gigs of movies in there and it all went. I tried spotlighting, the trash everything but couldnt get it back. Naturally, I got rather pissed off so tried fixing it then gave up because I was annoyed!

PS. I wasnt drunk, unless you was taking the mick out of clevin lol

I wasn't suggesting you were drunk - I was suggesting that in my regular drunkenness I may stuff something up.

And it's just too easy to pick on clevin - especially tonight, he's offering up some dead-set pearls of wisdom.

EDIT - Um, you had 20GBs of movies - have they all gone? Do you have 20GB more space on the HDD? Have you restarted recently? Maybe with a restart all those movies might actually fine their way into the "Recovered Files" folder in the trash after a restart.
 
Chundles said:
I wasn't suggesting you were drunk - I was suggesting that in my regular drunkenness I may stuff something up.

And it's just too easy to pick on clevin - especially tonight, he's offering up some dead-set pearls of wisdom.

He certainly is. Well, thanks for your help. I'm slowly getting there with all this mac stuff & I'll get there eventually! I'll make sure I do cos its so much better than windows.
 
Chundles said:
EDIT - Um, you had 20GBs of movies - have they all gone? Do you have 20GB more space on the HDD? Have you restarted recently? Maybe with a restart all those movies might actually fine their way into the "Recovered Files" folder in the trash after a restart.

I've still got around 190GB free. I also don't have a Recovered Files folder in the trash.
EDIT- But yeah, they're all gone
 
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