Pretty urgent: does iMovie have a length limit?

I have been editing some raw footage in iMovie. It is currently up to one hour and ten minutes. All of a sudden it won't take any more clips. I try to drag them in and they bounce off! I am working with event files on an external disk, so space isn't the issue. The project file is on my laptop though. Anyway I was wondering if IMovie has a limit whether project file size or project minute length. Can't find anything in the help menu,plus I have a pretty good book on it. I am in iMovie 11.

Thank you so much.

Nadine

How full is your hard drive?

- Nick

About 80 gigs free?

Hippocampus24 said:

About 80 gigs free?

Click to expand...

Ok thanks. I was just checking to be sure you hadn't run out of HD space.

- Nick

Yes it is weird...I wouldn't be surprised if iMovie does have a limit, I am just surprised no one has mentioned it. I have a project due in two days. The total footage I want is about 75 minutes which I can pare down if I need to...but I don't want to do that, I want my footage. If there is a workaround I would be happy with that. Anyway thank you SO MUCH for getting back to me!

Hang on ... are you saying the external HD has 80gbs free or your boot drive? The latter is in play even though your project is on an external.

As for time limit, no iMovie does not have a time limit on projects.

Didnt figure it out...

No, I had 91 gigs free on my local hard drive, and 300 gigs on the external drive I was working off of. I put all my event footage on the external drive only, and even moved the project to the external drive eventually. (I had some footage on the laptop some on the external) That seemed to "fix" it, but then every once in a while I'd put a clip in and it just wouldn't add a transition. Maybe the clip was too small. So I would shut down and come back later and it would work. Not really a fix but I got the job done.

Do you have an opinion of how best to work in iMovie? I would like to make it so that my projects and events are all on an external 7200rpm disk by default so as not to tax my computer. But I noticed the consolidate media function only lets you consolidate it all to the hard drive!!! Weird.

Thanks,
Nadine

I have a video that is 2 hours and 4 minutes long in iMovie '11.

Hippocampus24 said:

(I had some footage on the laptop some on the external) That seemed to "fix" it, but then every once in a while I'd put a clip in and it just wouldn't add a transition. Maybe the clip was too small. So I would shut down and come back later and it would work. Not really a fix but I got the job done.

Click to expand...

This tells me that you were, in fact, running out of temporary free space. Working with video takes ENORMOUS amounts of free space that you get back when you're done but is in use during the actual editing process. Where you put your projects is irrelevant*, iMovie *will* use your boot drive as the "scratch disk" and there's nothing you can do about it so be sure to have *lots and lots* of free space on your boot drive.

*well, irrelevant to the workflow. It's obviously relevant for longer-term storage.

File Size limits to iMovie

There isn't a time length to any iMovie I've ever made. There's a limit to file size and to how many things you want to do. For example, I tried to make a video with a bunch of still pics from iPhoto. After about 150 to 200 or so it wouldn't take any more. Or if I try to have too many effects happening in the movie it will choke and not work. My work-around for that is to do the video in pieces. Save it in highest qualify with all the effect for the first part, then import it to the next project and do more effects to the next part, etc. My biggest concern is quality since I'm importing a compressed (even at highest quality) file and then adding on to it.