Restoring Clips

It's not uncommon for me to chop up a single long clip into so many little pieces that I've lost track of where they are. Some thrown away (in a Trash I can't open), some trimmed and reversed, some on the Shelf, and even a few in the movie itself. So imagine my frustration when I realize that I really need about two seconds of footage from the beginning that is now scattered throughout my project. Is all that work gone?

No way. iMovie has a last-ditch method of getting it all back, thanks to the way it stores files. As I mentioned in Chapter 6, clips you create don't actually exist as new files on your hard disk. Instead, iMovie simply notes what changes have been applied to clips, and grabs the necessary information from the clip's original data file. Using the Restore Clip Media command, iMovie can recover the clip as it was when you first imported it.

To restore a clip:

1. Select a clip in your movie or on the Shelf that you want to restore.

2. Choose Restore Clip from the Advanced menu. A dialog box explains the amount of footage that will be restored if you proceed (Figure 8.25).

   Figure 8.25. No matter how many times you chop up a clip in iMovie, the Restore Clip command is ready to pick up the pieces.

   

3. Click OK to restore, or Cancel to dismiss the dialog box.

Tips

• I like to make a copy of an altered clip before I restore it, just in case I need that edited snippet again.

• Say you take a clip and split it in half, then make edits to the second half. If you decide you want the entire clip back, restore the first half the edits you made to the second half are retained.

Trash Warning!

If you've emptied the Trash, you can't restore your clips. As part of emptying the Trash, iMovie deletes the actual portions of the data files that have been deleted. So be certain you want to empty the Trash before you do it.