Archive for the ‘iPhoto’ Category
iPhoto movie export
What happens when iPhoto doesn’t export movies? One of two things, you re-install iPhoto and risk losing the movies and photos; or you drop down to the Terminal level and move the files manually before re-installing iPhoto.
Option one is easy, you open iPhoto, choose File from menu, and Export… from the File menu list. When you get to the dialog, change it Kind value to original. If everything is working, you should be able to double click the exported file in a Finder window and launch the program with QuickTime Player.
It’s important to know how to use option two when you’ve copied the movies from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod, and then deleted them. At this point, all you have is a recovery option from your local MacBook, MacBook Pro, or iMac to a safe folder (or command-line directory) before updating iPhoto.
This is how you perform option two:
- Open Finder and navigate to your user’s home directory, left click on Pictures, and then right click on iPhoto Library and choose Open With option from the first floating menu then Terminal on the context (or second) floating menu.
- In the Terminal window, a
pwd
command will show you the following directory for a user with the namesomeuser
:
/Users/someuser/Pictures/iPhoto Library |
- Again in the Terminal window, type a
ls
command will show you the following directory structure:
AlbumData.xml Info.plist Projects.db Attachments Library.data ThemeCache Auto Import Library.iPhoto Thumbnails Backup Library6.iPhoto iLifeShared Caches Masters iPhotoAux.db Contents Modified iPhotoLock.data Data Originals iPhotoMain.db Data.noindex Previews Database ProjectDBVersion.plist |
- In the Terminal window, change directory to the
Originals
directory with this syntax from the previous directory:
cd Originals |
- The directory structure can differ because of changes over time. The following is a snapshot example from 2012:
Jun 15, 2012 Jun 21, 2012 Jun 24, 2012 Jul 21, 2012 Sep 3, 2012 Jun 18, 2012 Jun 22, 2012 Jul 4, 2012 Aug 14, 2012 Oct 20, 2012 Jun 19, 2012 Jun 23, 2012 Jul 7, 2012 Aug 24, 2012 Nov 21, 2012 |
- Change to any of the preceding directories, and copy the
*.MOV
files to new directory. I’ve elected to copy the files to the following directory or thesomeuser
home directory (you can make the directory using the GUI Finder interface):
/Users/someuser/MovieBackup |
While the directory structure can differ because of changes in iPhone versions over time. Once you change into one of subdirectories of the Originals
directory, you can move all of the movie files from one of the subdirectories with this command to the MovieBackup
directory:
cp *.MOV ~someuser/MovieBackup |
It’s possible to move all your files by scripting a more elegant Bash file. As always, I hope this helps those who encounter the problem.