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pz1999 Author

Level 1

34 points

iMovie app taking up MORE space after doing some exports?

I'm trying to clear space from an iPad, and as part of this, trying to export iMovie projects. I exported several as projects and as videos. But now the iMovie app is taking a lot more space (about 12.5 GB) than it did before (about 10 GB)! And now I'm out of space to do any more exports. Is there some kind of cache in iMovie or on the iPad that I can see and force it to clear? If it matters I was exporting to Google Drive using "Copy to Google Drive".

Posted on May 23, 2020 10:43 PM

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pz1999 Author

Level 1

34 points

Posted on May 25, 2020 11:49 AM

I talked with Apple Support about this. From what I understand, the most likely explanation is that in iMovie on iOS, when you render a movie for export, iMovie saves the render, and (unlike MacOS iMovie) there is no way to delete it. Thus, just doing an export of a movie can cause bloat. Apparently doing a project export doesn't have the same problem-- after packaging up the project for export, and sending it to Google Drive, the package should get deleted. I'm not 100% sure this explains the issue I ran into but it was the one possibility that made the most sense.

What I am still wondering is, how many renders does iMovie on iOS keep? Does it keep every render you ever do? Does it keep only the most recent? If I were to rerun the export but with smaller dimensions, would that overwrite the last render out and thus reclaim some space?

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iMovie app taking up MORE space after doing some exports?

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