Moving Clips to the Trash

One of the few elements of iMovie that vexes me is the Trash, which seems at first straightforward, but doesn't act the way you would expect. You can easily delete clips, which are sent to the Trash, but there's no way to open the Trash and pull a deleted clip out (a behavior that every Mac user is accustomed to in the Finder).

To delete a clip:

  1. Select a clip.

  2. Press the Delete key, or click and drag the clip to the Trash icon (Figure 7.14).

    Figure 7.14. To delete a clip, drag it to the Trash; or, simply select the clip and press the Delete key.

    graphics/07fig14.gif

So far, so simple. Remember that iMovie isn't actually deleting any file from your hard disk, only keeping track of which portions of clips have been sent to the Trash (Figure 7.15).

Figure 7.15. As clips are added, the Trash indicates how much footage is marked for deletion.

graphics/07fig15.gif

Emptying the Trash

If you know you're not going to need any of the deleted clips later, you can empty the Trash. This action permanently deletes the media files (or portions of the files, depending on what was cut), and frees up the amount of disk space indicated next to the Trash icon.

However, emptying the Trash also permanently affects most of your clips you can't use the Undo command, or restore clips to their original state. So unless you desperately need to reclaim some hard disk space, don't empty the Trash until your movie is finished.

To empty the Trash:
  1. Choose Empty Trash from the File menu, or click the Trash can icon.

  2. iMovie displays a warning (Figure 7.16). Click OK to empty the Trash, or click Cancel to leave its contents untouched.

    Figure 7.16. I usually think reminder dialog boxes are annoying, but this is one I always pay attention to.

    graphics/07fig16.gif

graphics/tick.gif Tips

  • Levels of Undo don't transfer between your editing sessions. When you quit iMovie then launch it again later, your last 10 actions are forgotten.

  • One way to restore clips you've trashed is to quit iMovie without saving changes to your project (Figure 7.17). When you launch it again, the clips you threw away will be intact again (though you lose all other edits you made since the last save). Another way is to use the Restore Clip command, which is detailed in Chapter 8.

    Figure 7.17. Resurrect your trashed footage by quitting iMovie without saving any changes.

    graphics/07fig17.gif

  • Don't forget that even if you empty the Trash, you still have a backup of your clips: the original footage stored on your camcorder's tape.

  • Sometimes it can take a while to empty the Trash, due to the way iMovie stores the clip media files. Deleting a short section at the beginning of a clip, for example, makes emptying the Trash take longer because iMovie must first copy the clip's remaining data, calculate the time between the new beginning and the ending, then delete the original file. Trashing a section from the end of a clip is quicker, because iMovie already knows the clip's beginning point.




iMovie 3 for MAC OS X. Visual QuickStart Guide
iMovie 3 for Mac OS X (Visual QuickStart Guide)
ISBN: 0321193970
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 125
Authors: Jeff Carlson

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