Computer Digital File Management
Picture and Video File Back Up
iPhoto Files
Pictures are often priceless captures of memories that we wish to hold on to. If your pictures are stored on your computer in your iPhoto library, it is a good idea to backup those files on an external drive such as a flash drive or a cloud based storage such as dropbox. These files can then be moved to another computer or used straight from the storage location. Follow these directions to export your iPhoto photos to an external drive.
Connect your external drive. Open the drive and create a folder to hold your photos.
Give the new folder a name.
Open iPhoto. Select photos.
To make sure that all photos are exported, click anywhere in the gray area. This will insure that you have not selected an individual photo. Now click File > Export.
A new menu will open. You should select File Export and select JPEG for "Kind”, It’s recommended you choose the highest quality available from the drop down menus. Before exporting your photos, check the number of items in the bottom left corner. This number should represent all photos in your library. Click export when finished.
A final menu will open. This menu wants to know where to export your photos.
Choose your external drive and the new folder that you created inside that drive.
Click OK and your pictures will export. The time duration for this export will depend on the number of photos you have in your iPhoto library. If you have a large number of photos this could take quite a while. Make sure that you allow time for this export to complete before beginning.
That's it, you have backed up your photos and they can be moved to any computer or chosen destination.
iMovie Files
If you have iMovie projects that you have not saved and would like to save, you will need to export them from the iMovie application.
To do this, open iMovie, click on the project, then select "Share."
You can choose Export Movie or Export using Quicktime.
You will then be asked where to export the movie.
Assuming that you created a movie folder in your external drive, you can choose the external drive and your newly created Movie Folder. Then click SAVE.
Movie Files
For those of you that have completed or stored video files on your computer, you can also move those to your external drive or save them to your Google drive.
To find these files, open Finder and look for the Movie folder in the finder menu.
If you have movies in this folder, you will be able to see the files. If you do not want to lose the video files, move them to your external drive or upload them to your google drive.
Just follow the "Uploading files to Google Drive" directions and choose your Movie folder to locate the video for upload.