Importing old Imovie project

Hi,

It looks like the old iMovie file is from version iMovie 6 or earlier. If so, the iMovie 6 app won't play on Catalina or later operating systems. However, you can open the package contents of the iMovie 6 project folder and convert and play the project's movie located in the iDVD folder in package contents. Control click on the movie's icon in the iDVD folder and choose Encode Selected Video Files from the pop up menu. You will get a separately encoded video file that you can drag onto your desktop and then into the iMovie 10 timeline. The movie will contain all of the edits of the original iMovie 6 project. You can render it in iMovie 10, and edit it to a limited extent in iMovie 10, such as splitting and moving and deleting clip segments, trimming, adding music and titles, and so on.

Read this link all the way through for more instructions, particularly the posts by thesurreyfriends.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251577337?answerId=253056340022&sortBy=best

-- Rich

Try making a boot disk, and that way you can switch back and forth between Mojave and your current operating system..

Check out these links:

Use more than one version of macOS on a Mac - Apple Support

Create a bootable installer - Apple Support

Main thing is to be sure that you make a back up of all your data first.

-- Rich

It tried it with an old iMovie 6 project and the encoding worked fine in the iDVD folder. When I clicked Continue the encoding was done. Then I was able to drag out the encoded movie to my desktop and play it in QuickTimePlayer 10. Here are the encoding settings that I used:

You might try changing your encoding settings to see if that makes a difference.

-- Rich

You have said that when If you export the project on the old computer the quality is very bad.

Do you still have a copy of the project on the old computer? What OS is it running?

Are you able to access the video in the Media folder and if so play them in QTP by double clicking on them?

If you can play the video files back is the quality still bad, i.e. pixelated and 12 FPS ?

If the quality of the original media is suspect then any means of retrieving your project by going back to Mojave is unlikely to be successful.

If you have the project on your old computer you could try double clicking on the Justus 3.mov in the iDVD folder as described by Rich above.

The video file that you need to drag out from the iDVD folder is the separate converted file that you made when you Control-Clicked on the original file in the iDVD folder and selected Encode Selected Video Files. The original file cannot be read, but the re-encoded file can be read. The encoding must be done within the iDVD folder. After you encode the original file, you drag out the encoded file.

-- Rich

Hmmmm. I tried, but without success, encoding the iDVD folder .mov file with Handbrake and with VLC, both very popular video converters. I don't know whether there is some other video converting app out there that might work.

I am presently using a Mac that is running Mojave, a 32 bit program. Perhaps the Encode Selected Video Files feature has been changed in later operating system that have been upgraded to 64 bit. Or maybe the 62 bit system won't work to encode 32 bit-created videos. Perhaps if you can use a friend's computer that is running Mojave or earllier, or make a boot disk with Mojave downloaded on it, the encode feature might work.

Otherwise, unless you have a working copy of the iMovie app version in which the project was created, it looks like you won't be able to replicate the project with the edits intact.

However, the original unedited Media for the project is contained in the Media folder of the iMovie Show Package Contents folder. You can select the clips and do Edit/Copy and then Edit/Paste them into a desktop folder. Or copy drag them out by holding down the Option key as you drag. Then you can import the clips into an iMovie 10 project and rebuild the project there.

-- Rich