Home Forums Peripherals & Multimedia Audio, Video, Photography Moving Photos and Movies to new machine

I have a (barely computer literate) daughter who recently bought a new iMac. Her issue du jure…

Without using Migration Assistant, how does one easily move their photos and movies from an older machine (10.6x or 10.7x I think) to a new iMac?

Aren't there library folders that can be simply dragged and dropped from the old machine to the new corresponding folder location? If so, where are they?

Rather than someone listing possible locations of your daughter's photos and movies, you could expedite the answer by letting us know whether your daughter uses programs like iPhoto, iMovie or iTunes to handle these kinds of files. This will focus us on the actual rather than possible locations. As many of these programs store their data in library files or project folders of their own (see the Pictures, Movies and Music folders in the Home folder), moving those involves telling the programs of the move, sometimes by performing or initiating the move from within the program. Apart from this, standard media file formats let you move such files via the Finder.

PS, I take it you meant to say "issue du jour" rather than "issue de jure".

1. And I said it was my daughter who was having du jour/jure problems…

Indeed I hope I learned that lesson. If not, though, perhaps I'll blame my daughter.

2. AFAIK, all photos are/were kept in iPhoto and the movies were kept in iMovie.

also make sure she understands she should hold off on importing pics from the camera until after you have her photo library moved. otherwise, headaches.

If you're talking about iPhoto and iMovie, it's easy as pie to copy to a different drive. Open the Pictures folder, grab the iPhoto library, copy to the new Pictures folder. Open the Movies folder, copy everything in it to the new Movies folder.

As tacit mentioned, moving iPhoto data is fairly straightforward, in that you can simply copy the iPhoto Library (/Users/Username/Pictures/iPhoto Library). Various tips can be found in the following articles:
- Splitting and archiving iPhoto libraries
- Back up iPhoto's Faces database
- Shifting large media libraries
- Online backup options for photographers

With iMovie it's best to copy your projects from within the application:
- Relocate your iMovie projects

Many thanks to y'all.

After my daughter receives a 400/800 cable we'll give it go. And then, I'll past again-singing your praises.