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importing imovie projects

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I'm in the process of making a stop-motion film in iMovie, and need to transfer the project from one computer to another. I have the iMovie Project file sitting on my desktop but it won't open in iMovie. Is there a way around this?
 
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Sheesh. What version of iMovie?

You might be better off using something like iStopMotion.
 
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I'm using iMovie 7.1.4.
We tried iStopMotion but weren't happy with the quality, it seemed to pixelate the frames.
Any thoughts?
 
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Moving iMovie 08 projects will not be as simple as previous versions. In previous version you had a project file that was self contained. In the new version things get tricky.

iMovie 08 relies on three folders within a users Movies folder. (The 'iMovie Events' folder can have it's name on the root of other drives too.) Two of those folders are important; 'iMovie Events' and 'iMovie Projects'. I'll now refer to them as iME and iMP. The third folder is 'iMovie Sharing', which you'll find content in when using the fixed Sharing export options.

Keep in mind I haven't had to try what I'm about to suggest. It just makes sense though when thinking of the standard install.

First of course you should be running the same or newer version of iMovie on the computer you are copying to.

What you want to try is to move the appropriate event names you are using content from and the project name from the iME & iMP folders from the first computer to the same location on the second computer. Do not alter any of the names. I would then expect iMovie to start as expected and be able to use that content and project.

Sample, given names 'Event1' and 'Project1' and user 'mickbab' on the first computer and 'xstep' on the second computer.

The first computer will have;

~/mickbab/Movies/iMovie Events/Event1
~/mickbab/Movies/iMovie Projects/Project1.rcproject

You want to copy those two items to the new computer to;

~/xstep/Movies/iMovie Events/Event1
~/xstep/Movies/iMovie Projects/Project1.rcproject​

One possible issue might be if you are using images from iPhoto. I don't think the copy will find the original file if needed, although it will have a self contained image it copied originally. You may or may not see quality issues with this copy. I have my own questions about possible quality issues that I don't want to get into here. You can investigate further by opening a project file that uses stills and open the 'Still Images' file via QuickTime.
 
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I'm not sure what the pixelation problem would be in iStopMotion. I recall you do have to be careful when setting up a project. You have to set the appropriate size when you first create the project. I have the Home edition so am limited to a size of 720x576. Only the very expensive Pro version allows for HD size creations.

Second, when exporting a size larger than your projects native size, then most applications will pixelate the result.
 
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thanks for your help xstep. i will try this and see how it goes when i get back to the original computer.
 

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