Section B.9. Project Corruption

B.9. Project Corruption

Most of the time, iMovie stops people's hearts only with the beauty and magnificence of its creations. Unfortunately, every now and then, it can stop your heart in a much more terrifying way. At some random moment when you least expect it, some iMovie project that you've worked on for days or weeks refuses to open .

The odds of project corruption in iMovie 6 are lower than in any previous version, but if it happens, that's little consolation.

B.9.1. Using the Timeline Movie to Recover the Project

If the worst should happen, you may be able to rescue the project by importing its timeline movie to a new, fresh, iMovie project file. (More on the timeline movie in a moment.)

If you read Section 4.13, you know that the modern iMovie"document"is, in fact, a tricky kind of folder. To open it, Control-click (or right-click) the project's Finder icon; from the shortcut menu, choose Show Package Contents. In the window that opens, double-click the Cache icon. Inside, you'll see an icon called Timeline Movie.mov.

The Timeline Movie is a reference movie. That is, it contains no video or audio of its ownjust pointers to the video and audio files stored in the package's Media folder. If those files are intact, then the reference movie will play the project just as iMovie did.

Create a new iMovie project, and then drag the Timeline Movie.mov icon from the Finder window right into the Timeline Viewer of the new project.

Now, the resulting movie will contain all of the original movie project, but you should be aware that it will show up in the new project as a single, giant clip. You won't be able to edit the titles and transitions, but at least everything will play in the proper order.