Open Radar

 
29-Mar-2012 01:57 PM Jon Stacey:
Summary: iMovie does not provide a meaningful tool or mechanism to relink missing assets. For example, if an AIFF file that was used in the project is moved from it's original location, there does not appear to be a way to "find" and relink the original asset to the existing location.

Steps to Reproduce:
Produce some kind of an asset that can be added to iMovie by dragging and dropping. For example, a simple voice recording exported as an AIFF file from GarageBand will work just fine.

Create a basic iMovie project and drag and drop the AIFF file from wherever you saved it [e.g. Desktop] into iMovie. At this point you can tweak the timings and other settings as you wish.

Now, move the original AIFF file to some other location, such as away from the Desktop and into the project package itself to keep the project self contained.

Expected Results:
I expect iMovie to 1) automatically detect the new location of the asset or mark it as missing, and/or 2) ask when dragging/dropping whether to copy or reference the asset, and/or 3) provide a mechanism for the user to see all assets within the project and then relink missing ones to the project. This way, the asset entry within iMovie such as an audio clip does not need to be deleted and then re-added and then tweaked again.


Actual Results:
When the original asset is moved as described above and the project is opened, iMovie will say that an asset is missing, but then does not provide a mechanism through which to identify the new location. Essentially, this means that the project will become corrupted because the asset is now missing. Fixing the project requires deleting the asset from iMovie and then adding it again along with all of the tweaks previously made. The only alternative appears to be manually editing the paths in the project data file itself.

Regression:

Notes: