# Managing Movies To Create Space In iTunes



## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

I find myself buying more movies than I have room to store on my primary computer and would like to have some options to manage them. I can drag a movie out of iTunes to the desktop where it appears as a m4v file, but I can't burn it to a DVD to store it. 

Is the only answer to use a separate external HD and store them as m4v files, delete them from iTunes and then import them back into iTunes when I want to view them? Or can I just delete them and download them again from my 'purchased' file in iTunes itself when I want to view them again and not worry about storage?

I just want to create more disk space, not try and watch them on anything but my MBP, Mini or Apple TV 2 (or iPhone or iPad for that matter).

I do have a 160 GB original Apple TV, but it is nearing the full mark as well.


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## Andrew Pratt (Feb 16, 2007)

Why can't you burn the movies? You should be able to burn it as a m4v file or use a program to rip it as movie in DVD format.

Personally though I'd just move them to an external drive.


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

Andrew Pratt said:


> Why can't you burn the movies? You should be able to burn it as a m4v file or use a program to rip it as movie in DVD format.
> 
> Personally though I'd just move them to an external drive.


I tried to burn the m4v files using Toast 10 and it gave me a 'protected' message of some sort.


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## doglips (Feb 28, 2001)

I've flashed my aTV so I can use an external drive and liberate myself from the tyranny of itunes.


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

SINC said:


> I tried to burn the m4v files using Toast 10 and it gave me a 'protected' message of some sort.


This. iTunes-purchased films have FairPlay protection.


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

Also - don't delete movies permanently: Unlike music and TV shows, they cannot be re-downloaded. I'd keep them on an external hard drive like others have already suggested.


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## G-Mo (Sep 26, 2007)

I keep over 750GB of video on an eternal HDD which I have Aliases to in my iTunes Media folder... Works as expected at home, but isn't available "on the road" unless I take the external drive with me... perfect solution for me.


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

G-Mo said:


> I keep over 750GB of video on an eternal HDD which I have Aliases to in my iTunes Media folder... Works as expected at home, but isn't available "on the road" unless I take the external drive with me... perfect solution for me.


I assume you keep them as m4v files, do you?


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

Easiest option by far is simply to copy them from the iTunes/Movies folder inside your Music folder (go figure) to an external drive—these are quite cheap these days—and then delete them from your iTunes/Movies folder after doing so. You'll get a (!) beside the file if you try to play it in iTunes, but then you just redirect iTunes to the new location and you're good to go. Saves disk space on your main computer, yet the movie will continue to work on your MB, ATV, or wherever else as though it were still in your MB hard drive. 

Eventually we'll be able to do the same with iCloud, I'd imagine.


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## G-Mo (Sep 26, 2007)

SINC said:


> I assume you keep them as m4v files, do you?


Yes, they are m4v's as purchased or ripped (handbrake). The folders used to live on my local HDD, I simply moved them to an external when my collection outgrew my local storage and aliased the folders to my iTunes Media folder... Have a large backup drive which backups both the internal HDD and the external HDD as well.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

Lost in this discussion (I'm surprised Lars didn't mention it) is that you can INDEED burn iTunes M4V files to disc for backup ... AS DATA.

If Don was trying to burn it in Toast as a data disc he would of course get a "protected" message.


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## PosterBoy (Jan 22, 2002)

Easiest method: buy a god, fast, FireWire drive. I just picked up an Iomega ultra max 2tb which uses FireWire 800 for example.

Get it set up however you want it (ultra max is actually 2 1tb drives so I have it set up as two independent drives, but I digress). 

Then go to your iTunes preferences, under the advanced tab (I think, I'm not near either computer at the moment) change your iTunes library location to the new external drive. Then, if memory serves, File menu -> library -> consolidate library... And it will relocate all your files to the external.

Obviously, not the most ideal solution if you're a mobile user, but then again you can get some pretty decent portable self powered FireWire drives too.


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

chas_m said:


> Lost in this discussion (I'm surprised Lars didn't mention it) is that you can INDEED burn iTunes M4V files to disc for backup ... AS DATA.
> 
> If Don was trying to burn it in Toast as a data disc he would of course get a "protected" message.


I think what you meant was, "If Don was trying to burn it in Toast as a *VIDEO* disc he would of course get a "protected" message."

That is of course, what I tried to do. I just tried using data and it is burning fine as I type this. Thanks chas_m, you have solved my issue. Another external HD was not a solution for me to carry the movies in the motor home as space is tight there already. Now a few DVDs are quite easily handled.


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## rgray (Feb 15, 2005)

SINC said:


> I tried to burn the m4v files using Toast 10 and it gave me a 'protected' message of some sort.


The Burn command in Finder works perfectly well for this purpose. I do exactly that regularly. Why bother with Toast?


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

I've had Toast versions for years and just never thought about the Finder method. I will give it a try, thanks.


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## Joker Eh (Jan 22, 2008)

SINC said:


> I think what you meant was, "If Don was trying to burn it in Toast as a *VIDEO* disc he would of course get a "protected" message."
> 
> That is of course, what I tried to do. I just tried using data and it is burning fine as I type this. Thanks chas_m, you have solved my issue. *Another external HD was not a solution for me to carry the movies in the motor home as space is tight there already. *Now a few DVDs are quite easily handled.


SINC I just wanted to mention about these

Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1TB External Portable Hard Drive (WDBACX0010BBL-NESN) - Blue : Portable External Hard Drives - Best Buy Canada

, they are no bigger than your hand and don't need an external power source. They would take up less space than a bunch of disc's that is for sure. I carry 3 of them in my backpack and they weigh nothing, and that is where I keep many of my media files for travel.


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

Joker Eh said:


> SINC I just wanted to mention about these
> 
> Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1TB External Portable Hard Drive (WDBACX0010BBL-NESN) - Blue : Portable External Hard Drives - Best Buy Canada
> 
> , they are no bigger than your hand and don't need an external power source. They would take up less space than a bunch of disc's that is for sure. I carry 3 of them in my backpack and they weigh nothing, and that is where I keep many of my media files for travel.


Thanks Joker Eh, I should have thought of that myself as the backup drive I carry in the motorhome is in fact a WD mini in the 500 GB format.

Question: Is the drive fast enough to play movies smoothly? My current WD mini is slow and takes about five minutes when used as a boot drive to fully boot the MBP.


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## Andrew Pratt (Feb 16, 2007)

> Easiest method: buy a god


That's easy? Sign me up! 



> Question: Is the drive fast enough to play movies smoothly? My current WD mini is slow and takes about five minutes when used as a boot drive to fully boot the MBP.


Yes the drives will be plenty fast enough.


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## Joker Eh (Jan 22, 2008)

SINC said:


> Thanks Joker Eh, I should have thought of that myself as the backup drive I carry in the motorhome is in fact a WD mini in the 500 GB format.
> 
> Question: Is the drive fast enough to play movies smoothly? My current WD mini is slow and takes about five minutes when used as a boot drive to fully boot the MBP.


The last time I played a move from mine it was fast enough. I haven't used it to play movies in a long time because of Netflix.


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

PosterBoy said:


> Then go to your iTunes preferences, under the advanced tab (I think, I'm not near either computer at the moment) change your iTunes library location to the new external drive. Then, if memory serves, File menu -> library -> consolidate library... And it will relocate all your files to the external.


I have now finished these steps and my mini HD named iTunes Movie HD is now showing up as the iTunes location and an empty file folder shows up on the min HD. (see screen captures below) Trouble is, no movies or any iTunes data is moving over to the new HD.

I have even tried exporting to no avail. What should I be trying now?


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

OK, I thought what can I lose and am did a command A, then dragged all movies out of iTunes to the mini HD. May as well try it and see if it works, then delete the movies from iTunes. That leaves me with the question, what about the other content?


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

When you click on the title in iTunes, I believe you just need to inform iTunes where it can find the new location of your movies. While it's there, it will see how many other "lost" titles it can find. iTunes does the actual heavy lifting here—you just need to tell it where to look.


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

That little effort didn't work either, but it seems to have made iTunes aware of the mini drive. Now when I ask it to 'consolidate library', it is actually copying everything to the mini. Sheesh, that took a while to get done but I think all is going to happen as prescribed now.

Next question: When this is done, do I delete all movies in iTunes to the trash to gain back my space?


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

Well, that worked fine and all my data is on the mini, (see screen shot below)

Now, do I delete everything from iTunes (and direct it to the trash?), or do I install iTunes on the mini and run it all from there? So far, I have zero space gain on the MBP.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

SINC said:


> That little effort didn't work either, but it seems to have made iTunes aware of the mini drive. Now when I ask it to 'consolidate library', it is actually copying everything to the mini. Sheesh, that took a while to get done but I think all is going to happen as prescribed now.
> 
> Next question: When this is done, do I delete all movies in iTunes to the trash to gain back my space?


Not exactly. You don't want to consolidate iTunes, because that just fills up your hard drive all over again. You just want iTunes to access movie files that are not actually located on your hard drive, but rather your external drive. You just need to tell iTunes where to find them, not recopy them.

I can explain this better step by step. First, look in iTunes for the movie you want, which should no longer be located on your hard drive, but rather your external drive. You should see a little exclamation mark inside a small circle next to the "missing" file. Double click on this exclamation mark.

iTunes will tell you the file can't be found and do you want to locate it. Choose "Locate."

Next, find the file (movie) inside your external drive and click on it. This tells iTunes where the new location of this file is going to be.

iTunes will then ask you if you'd like it to use this information to find more files. I always say yes—what do I have to lose?

iTunes will tell you how many other files it could find. You may need to do this procedure many times before your library is completely up to date.

Finally, when you look in iTunes for the formerly missing movie, it will appear right there like everything else as though it were still on your hard drive, but if you examine the pathway under "Get Info" (command-i), you will see it's actually on your external drive. Now it's easy-peasy to watch all your movies same as before (as long as your external drive is attached), but you've now reclaimed all that hard drive space for other things. 

Hope this helps.

ETA: Sorry, the images are in a bit of a jumbled order, but the directions hopefully are clear. I always check to make sure the movie can run when it's on the external drive by using the space bar to make it play, then when I know everything is working, I delete the file directly from the iTunes Movies folder inside the Music folder in the finder.

This procedure also works well for music files or anything else that might be cluttering up your hard drive space, although we now have iCloud to help with that.


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

Thanks fjn, but you lost me right here:



> I can explain this better step by step. First, look in iTunes for the movie you want, which should no longer be located on your hard drive, but rather your external drive. You should see a little exclamation mark inside a small circle next to the "missing" file. Double click on this exclamation mark.


As I noted, I have already 'consolidated' so the external has all the files, a duplicate of iTunes which again begs the question, 'do I delete everything from the iTunes on the MBP'?


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

SINC said:


> Thanks fjn, but you lost me right here:
> 
> 
> 
> As I noted, I have already 'consolidated' so the external has all the files, a duplicate of iTunes which again begs the question, 'do I delete everything from the iTunes on the MBP'?


Not sure how to answer, because I haven't tried the consolidation method. Does this mean you have duplicate files now on both your hard drive and your external drive? If so, try deleting a movie (maybe a smaller, less important one) and see what happens. First thing that should happen is you'll see a (!) beside your file in iTunes. After that, the steps I've outlined should do the rest of the job. I wouldn't delete any files though until I was sure that iTunes will find them and play them from another location.

Once you've determined that iTunes can for sure play the file without reloading it into your hard drive iTunes folder, then feel free to delete away anything that's redundant in your hard drive and reclaim your hard drive space.


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## PosterBoy (Jan 22, 2002)

SINC said:


> Thanks fjn, but you lost me right here:
> 
> 
> 
> As I noted, I have already 'consolidated' so the external has all the files, a duplicate of iTunes which again begs the question, 'do I delete everything from the iTunes on the MBP'?


If you consolodated your itunes library onto the external drive (and a simple test would be in itunes, right click any song/movie and choose 'show in finder' and make sure its actually on the external) then you can delete the originals from your primary hdd, yes


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

When I used the show in finder as suggested, each movie in iTunes now has a small exclamation point in front of the title as fjn mentions, as shown below, but it really doesn't tell me anything:










However, when I play a movie now, the light on the external definitely begins to flash, I can feel the drive running and it quits when I stop the movie, so I assume it is playing from the external.

But, 'Get Info" tells me it is definitely on the xternal names iTunes Movie HD:










I have now deleted a few movies from iTunes as a test, but I see no change in my available disk space, nor does an alias appear in iTunes to allow me to access the movie to play it. To do that, I have to drag the movie back into iTunes from the external which doesn't seem right to me. How does on get those alias files to appear?

Thanks for the patience and help guys, I do appreciate it.


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## Macified (Sep 18, 2003)

When you delete the movie, are you emptying the trash? Seems like a silly question but I forget that step.


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

Yep, I get that part, now I just have to figure out how to get aliases to appear in iTunes. that now has me stumped.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

SINC said:


> Yep, I get that part, now I just have to figure out how to get aliases to appear in iTunes. that now has me stumped.


I found success by copying the movie files from the movies folder inside the iTunes folder inside the music folder in the finder to an external drive. I didn't delete them or consolidate them or anything directly from iTunes itself. Once the files were copied and I verified that they were on the external drive, I then deleted them from the folder for movies inside the iTunes folder inside music folder in the finder. This step was all done outside of iTunes itself.

Then I used the steps I outlined before to help iTunes find the new location for the files. The System works like a charm for me, so I know I must be doing something right 

By default, iTunes thinks it has to import the media into its library in order to play it. This method simply tells iTunes it's okay to play this media file from another location.


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

SUCCESS! I deleted all movies from inside the iTunes folder in the Finder and gained well over 100 GB of disk space. That file is now empty and all my movies appear in iTunes and play from the external.

Thanks so much for all the help everyone. :clap:


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## tilt (Mar 3, 2005)

Sinc, I am quite late into this thread, but let me tell you what I do. It's very low-tech, but it serves my purpose (which is exactly the same purpose as yours - save space on my laptop).

My iTunes library stays on my laptop, not on an external.

I download/rip/whatever, a movie into iTunes and watch it.

Once I am done watching, I locate the actual file in Finder (.m4v or whatever), copy that onto my external. Copy, not move.

Back into iTunes, I select the movie and hit Delete. When iTunes asks whether to keep the files or move them into Trash, I select Move to Trash, and then I empty Trash.

This way, I have space on my laptop, and I have the movie on my external.

If I feel like watching a movie again, I open iTunes and "Add to library" the movie from my external and watch it and delete it; rinse and repeat.

This works for me, because even I do not understand the concept of Consolidating Library or using an external library or stuff like that.

Cheers and good luck.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

SINC said:


> SUCCESS! I deleted all movies from inside the iTunes folder in the Finder and gained well over 100 GB of disk space. That file is now empty and all my movies appear in iTunes and play from the external.
> 
> Thanks so much for all the help everyone. :clap:


Good to hear it.


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

Thanks tilt for the info. I guess whatever works for the individual is OK.

But it just dawned on me that I now have no back up for my movies. Now I will have to back them up to yet another external as a precaution against loss in case the mini fails. Sigh.


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

I found an external I had forgotten about and my movies are being backed up right now.


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## PosterBoy (Jan 22, 2002)

SINC said:


> Thanks tilt for the info. I guess whatever works for the individual is OK.
> 
> But it just dawned on me that I now have no back up for my movies. Now I will have to back them up to yet another external as a precaution against loss in case the mini fails. Sigh.


Yup. That's why I got that Iomega 2TB Ultramax. You can have it show up as two separate 1TB drives, so I have my iTunes Library on one and Time machine backing up my main HDD and the iTunes drive to the other


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

SINC said:


> Thanks tilt for the info. I guess whatever works for the individual is OK.
> 
> But it just dawned on me that I now have no back up for my movies. Now I will have to back them up to yet another external as a precaution against loss in case the mini fails. Sigh.


Or use the fact that they're already bought and paid for in iCloud and you can redownload them any time if you need to. If they were purchased in iTunes, anyway. You may want to backup other non-iTunes movies though.


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

fjnmusic said:


> Or use the fact that they're already bought and paid for in iCloud and you can redownload them any time if you need to. If they were purchased in iTunes, anyway. You may want to backup other non-iTunes movies though.


Now I am confused about re-downloading a lost movie again given your comments above and Lars' comments below. 

None of my movies are in iCloud that I can find.



Lars said:


> Also - don't delete movies permanently: Unlike music and TV shows, they cannot be re-downloaded. I'd keep them on an external hard drive like others have already suggested.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

I might be getting ahead of myself, Don. I know iCloud works currently for smaller files like songs or TV shows, so I'm assuming it's just a matter of time for movies too. You're right; backing up your external drive movies is probably the safest choice for now. Good thing memory keeps getting cheaper.


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