Possible to import clips into iMovie that are already on HD?

[DrHogie]

This is a bit of a weird request, but here goes:

My only mac that I have is my 500 MHz iBook w/ 10GB HD. After applications, I've only got 5GB free -- not very much for video editing. So, I took one batch of DV clips, imported it from my DV cam, and moved these clips to a SMB share on my Win2K machine. I imported three batches like this, all to different projects.

Now, I have the clips in different folders on my Win2K share, and I tried to start a new project in iMovie. When I chose Import File, iMovie tried to copy these files to the iBook hard drive I tried a workaround by symlinking the shared folders to a Media folder underneath the project, but that didn't work either.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can create a new project, yet have it accept the files on the SMB share in the Clips folder?

Thanks in advance,
DrHogie

[jove]

I had the same iBook with the same problem. I purchased an external Firewire drive. Could not do Camera imports directly to the drive without crashes, but editing was fine.

Did you try puting the iMovie project on the Windows box?

The way iMovie wants to manage and process its files, network access time may be too poor or the file API's it uses may be too low level for network access.