iMovie crashed. Upon restart, one of the videos on the main layers had a red line on it and no sound. I dragged the file again to the My Media section. Now it shows on the storyboard as 1/4 of the original size. I dragged it back again and it seems to be the correct dimension but now I have to edit again.
How do I avoid this or is there an easier method to replace the corrupted file if this happens again?
Mac mini, macOS 15.6
Hi,
You can retrieve your movie, with edits intact, from the iMovie Backups folder.
To get to the iMovie Backups folder, follow this file path from the Finder menu:
Go/Home/Library/Containers/com.apple.iMovieApp/Data/Library/Caches/iMovieBackups
NOTE: If running Ventura or later, in the above file path substitute iMovie for com.apple.iMovieApp. So, for Ventura or later, the file path would read:
Go/Home/Library/Containers/iMovie/Data/Library/Caches/iMovieBackups
When you get there you will see a list of previous backups of your iMovie library.
Click on one dated just before your issue started. iMovie will open in that library. Navigate to your projects browser (where your projects are displayed as icons) and see if your project is intact. You can then copy it over to your original library.
-- Rich
Hi,
You can retrieve your movie, with edits intact, from the iMovie Backups folder.
To get to the iMovie Backups folder, follow this file path from the Finder menu:
Go/Home/Library/Containers/com.apple.iMovieApp/Data/Library/Caches/iMovieBackups
NOTE: If running Ventura or later, in the above file path substitute iMovie for com.apple.iMovieApp. So, for Ventura or later, the file path would read:
Go/Home/Library/Containers/iMovie/Data/Library/Caches/iMovieBackups
When you get there you will see a list of previous backups of your iMovie library.
Click on one dated just before your issue started. iMovie will open in that library. Navigate to your projects browser (where your projects are displayed as icons) and see if your project is intact. You can then copy it over to your original library.
-- Rich
3 hours is a long time to be editing in iMovie. While iMovie saves your edits and other changes as you go along, I do not believe it has any function that autosaves its state in a way that could be used for recovery.
When you have a major project I suggest limiting edit sessions to 1 hour. Then close iMovie and back up the iMovie Library file (by default it is ~/Users/yourusername/Movies/iMovie Library.imovielibrary). You can copy the library to another disk or volume and even rename it (but keep the .imovielibrary suffix)
Related suggestion, create a separate iMovie Library for each project. Don't use a single iMovie Library as the repository for multiple projects and their media.
Yes. I have experienced the project crashing at time so I was using duplicate project and update at intervals deleting the older duplicates. I will take your advice to copy library to another disk.
Thanks.
iMovie crashed after 3 hours of editing.
