iMovie help! Original elements deleted, how to recover?
September 2, 2017 6:32 PM Subscribe
My wife is devastated. An iMovie of the first year of our twin boys' lives is ruined due to the way iMovie functions. Help me help my wife who's currently upstairs bawling, somewhat understandably.
Today is the 1st birthday of my twin boys. My wife has spent countless hours over the last year creating a 30+ minute video for me and our extended family. The problem is she created this video on her iPhone, and on iMovie. I now know that iMovie basically sucks and that it was a mistake to use it.
Tried to export the iMovie Project to my Mac/Dropbox/YouTube. Not possible due to not enough space on the phone. OK--no problem--all the movies and pics on your phone which are backed up to Dropbox can be deleted to free up space so we can in turn export the iMovie Project, right?
Wrong.
What I did not know is that for some (ridiculous, asinine) reason, the iMovie Project isn't a copy of the original files but is in fact somehow using the ORIGINAL, so that when we deleted those originals off of the phone we were effectively killing the iMovie. When it's played in its current state there are literally blanks where the deleted elements once were. And it can't be exported. What. The. Fuck.
We're talking rivers of tears here, and I'm upset for her. This was supposed to be the culmination of a lot of work and she was very excited to show me and everyone else this video.
Is there a reasonable way to recover the deleted files, isolate the elements that were deleted, OR export the iMovie in its current state which doesn't seem possible so we can attempt to rebuild it that way/not on an iPhone?
Thanks for any guidance you can provide.
Today is the 1st birthday of my twin boys. My wife has spent countless hours over the last year creating a 30+ minute video for me and our extended family. The problem is she created this video on her iPhone, and on iMovie. I now know that iMovie basically sucks and that it was a mistake to use it.
Tried to export the iMovie Project to my Mac/Dropbox/YouTube. Not possible due to not enough space on the phone. OK--no problem--all the movies and pics on your phone which are backed up to Dropbox can be deleted to free up space so we can in turn export the iMovie Project, right?
Wrong.
What I did not know is that for some (ridiculous, asinine) reason, the iMovie Project isn't a copy of the original files but is in fact somehow using the ORIGINAL, so that when we deleted those originals off of the phone we were effectively killing the iMovie. When it's played in its current state there are literally blanks where the deleted elements once were. And it can't be exported. What. The. Fuck.
We're talking rivers of tears here, and I'm upset for her. This was supposed to be the culmination of a lot of work and she was very excited to show me and everyone else this video.
Is there a reasonable way to recover the deleted files, isolate the elements that were deleted, OR export the iMovie in its current state which doesn't seem possible so we can attempt to rebuild it that way/not on an iPhone?
Thanks for any guidance you can provide.
Also check if these are backed up to Dropbox - if they are backed up to Dropbox you should be able to get them back, possibly even if you deleted them (go into your deleted files on Dropbox if you did delete them, unless you permanently delete them you should have 30 days to recover them IIRC)
posted by matcha action at 7:18 PM on September 2, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by matcha action at 7:18 PM on September 2, 2017 [3 favorites]
There should be a "Recently Deleted" folder/album in the Photos app that you can recover deleted photos/videos from. Link.
posted by misterbrandt at 7:20 PM on September 2, 2017 [8 favorites]
posted by misterbrandt at 7:20 PM on September 2, 2017 [8 favorites]
Yes. Recently deleted folder. *fingers crossed*
posted by jbenben at 7:49 PM on September 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by jbenben at 7:49 PM on September 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
If you sync your iPhone with a Mac (by wire or Wifi Sync);
Photos creates a folder called Videos which should have all your synced videos from your iPhone in it.
If you sync your iPhone photos to iCloud;
Log in to icloud.com and click the Photos icon. As on the Mac, there should be a folder called Videos. Your clips may be there.
Also on the cloud you can try iCloud.com -->Settings -->Advanced /Restore Files. This will show you a list of deleted files that can be recovered from the cloud only! not the iPhone itself.
posted by Zedcaster at 11:41 PM on September 2, 2017
Photos creates a folder called Videos which should have all your synced videos from your iPhone in it.
If you sync your iPhone photos to iCloud;
Log in to icloud.com and click the Photos icon. As on the Mac, there should be a folder called Videos. Your clips may be there.
Also on the cloud you can try iCloud.com -->Settings -->Advanced /Restore Files. This will show you a list of deleted files that can be recovered from the cloud only! not the iPhone itself.
posted by Zedcaster at 11:41 PM on September 2, 2017
Basically, imovie project files are just files with pointers to the originals. (The reason actually isn't ridiculous and asinine -- prior versions made copies of everything so the files bloated on up to unreasonable sizes.)
So the issue here is getting those original files with their original names *into the place they were when they were put into the movie*. That last part is super important.
This happens ALL THE TIME where I work -- I help undergrads using iMovie and they are constantly moving files from hard drive to hard drive or renaming out in Finder to make things "easier" and what they think is going to be me doing a technical fix is an exercise in forensic anthropology on how their file management brains work.
I have not done this on an iOS device, just iMacs, but the solution should be the same, so I think you are getting good advice here.
If the above steps to restore recent deletions don't work, then restoring the phone from backup would at least get you the original assets back, if not the iMovie file itself.
I think you will want to do this all on the phone itself. IME iOS iMovie and Mac OS iMovie don't always play nice. Though getting those assets back, transferring them to a Mac and then using iMovie on the Mac will get you a better experience if she does have to rebuild the project file itself.
posted by pixiecrinkle at 3:44 PM on September 4, 2017
So the issue here is getting those original files with their original names *into the place they were when they were put into the movie*. That last part is super important.
This happens ALL THE TIME where I work -- I help undergrads using iMovie and they are constantly moving files from hard drive to hard drive or renaming out in Finder to make things "easier" and what they think is going to be me doing a technical fix is an exercise in forensic anthropology on how their file management brains work.
I have not done this on an iOS device, just iMacs, but the solution should be the same, so I think you are getting good advice here.
If the above steps to restore recent deletions don't work, then restoring the phone from backup would at least get you the original assets back, if not the iMovie file itself.
I think you will want to do this all on the phone itself. IME iOS iMovie and Mac OS iMovie don't always play nice. Though getting those assets back, transferring them to a Mac and then using iMovie on the Mac will get you a better experience if she does have to rebuild the project file itself.
posted by pixiecrinkle at 3:44 PM on September 4, 2017
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by rdn at 6:48 PM on September 2, 2017 [1 favorite]