Getting Video into iMovie on the iPad without iCloud

A few months ago I wrote a post, My Kingdom for a Local iPad Data Store, talking about how I wanted to be able to use iMovie on the iPad to edit my drone videos. The problem was that in order to get the videos into iMovie they had to be in iCloud Photo Library or in iCloud Drive, but I didn’t want them to be uploaded and then maybe downloaded from the cloud because they are large files. Over the weekend I had an epiphany and figured out how to work around this by doing some offline file shuffling.

  1. Turn on Airplane mode to prevent any internet connection from occurring.
  2. Connect a Lightning to USB adapter with an attached SD card reader to the iPad. 
  3. Insert and SD card into the card reader or in my case a Micro SD card. 
  4. The Photos app will launch and prompt you to do an import. 
  5. Import any of the videos you want and then choose to keep or delete them on the card. 
  6. Unplug the Lightning to USB adapter. 
  7. In the Photos app go to the “Last Import” album. 
  8. Tap the Select button to enable selection mode and select all of the videos. 
  9. Tap on the “Share” button (the box with the arrow coming out of it). 
  10. In iOS 11 tap on the “Save to Files” action and in iOS 10 select the “Upload to iCloud Drive” action. This will copy the file to iCloud Drive. 
  11. In the Photos app tap the Select button again and select all the videos and this time delete them. 
  12. Go to the “Recently Deleted” album and delete all the videos from Photos (just in case these would get uploaded to iCloud Photo Library).
  13. Now open up iMovie. 
  14. Create a new movie and import all of your videos from iCloud Drive. 
  15. Click Done to go to the Summary screen just to make sure everything is “Saved”.
  16. If you are using iOS 11 open up the Files app and if you are using iOS 10 open up iCloud Drive. 
  17. Delete all of the videos from iCloud Drive. 
  18. Go to the Recently Deleted view and also delete them from there. 
  19. Finally open the Settings app. 
  20. Go into the settings for the current user, which should be the top option. 
  21. In the user menu select iCloud. 
  22. In the iCloud menu you can choose which apps will save their data to iCloud. 
  23. Turn this off for the iMovie app. 
  24. Now turn off Airplane mode and you are ready to work on your movie. 
The iCloud Drive/Files storage part seems a bit excessive, but was necessary because any videos imported to iMovie from the iCloud Photo Library stop working if you delete them.  Importing from iCloud Drive/Files on the other hand puts a copy in the iMovie app’s local storage.

Tips for iOS Device Enjoyment

Here is a list of the first things I do when I get a hold of somebody’s iPhone or iPad when they are looking for advice on how to set up their iOS devices.  After completing the following you should have a better experience with your iOS device.


  1. Upgrade to a paid iCloud storage plan.

    The free 5GB storage option is nice when you get started, but after you have lots of photos on your phone OR have two devices this space runs out quickly and will give you the dreaded “Unable to back up your device because you don’t have enough iCloud storage.”  Apple recently revised their storage tier pricing so you can get 50GB of storage for $0.99 per month (less than $12 per year).  This space can be used to store all sorts of things, but most people will use it for the back up of their devices and for their photos.

    To upgrade your storage plan just do the following:
    - Go to the Settings app
    - Navigate to the iCloud settings
    - Tap “Storage” setting
    - Tap “Change Storage Plan”
    - Tap the storage plan of your choice and tap Buy
    - You will be prompted to enter your iTunes password and will then be billed monthly.
  2. Turn on iCloud Photo Library

    One of the biggest culprits of the “Not enough space available” message is Photos and typically you see this message when trying to take a photo.  The gut response is to go to the Photos app and start deleting photos to make space, which will most likely cause you to make hurried and rash decisions.  You may find that when you have more time you will take the photos off of your device and put them on a computer, which works for a time, but then you don’t have access to them on your phone anymore.  The iCloud Photo Library will put a copy of all the photos on your device onto Apple’s servers.  The photos will take up your iCloud storage space, but if you completed step 1 above then you will be able to store plenty of photos.  The added bonus is you can see all the photos on any iOS devices you are logged into and will also be able to view them at iCloud.com.  Your “Not enough space available” issue will also be resolved, because as your device starts to run low on space, the device will start to clean up any of the full versions of the photos that are on the device that are also on Apple’s servers.  You will always have small versions (thumbnails) of your photos on your devices, but no matter what the full version will always exist in the server, only to be downloaded to your device if you try to view it.

    How to enable iCloud Photo Library
    - Go to the Settings app
    - Navigate to the iCloud settings
    - Tap the Photos item
    - Flip the switch to turn on the “iCloud Photo Library”
    - Choose “Optimize iPhone Storage” if you have a small phone and lots of photos.
    - It will take a while for it to upload all your photos.  Go to iCloud.com and you can see how it is progressing
  3. Turn on iCloud backup

    One of the most common features that people typically have turned off is the iCloud backup.  I often talk about this by saying, “I could take my phone and throw it into a river right now, go to an Apple store, buy a new phone and within minutes be up and running with everything exactly the same.”  Now of course that is a doomsday scenario, but this comes in handy when you get a new phone, because the first thing it asks you is whether or not you want to restore from an iCloud back up.

    How to enable iCloud Backup
    - Go to the Settings app
    - Navigate to the iCloud settings
    - Tap the Backup item
    - Turn on the back up
  4. Change the name of your device
    I would always get confused in the past when looking at a list of my devices somewhere either in the Find my iPhone app or with back ups regarding which actual device it was talking about.  I used to just say “Keegan’s iPhone”.  Starting with my iPhone 5, I actually went in and updated the name to “Keegan’s iPhone 5” so if I updated to the iPhone 6S I would know exactly which phone it was talking about.

    How to update your device name
    - Go to the Settings app
    - Navigate to General > About
    - Tap the Name field and update your device name to the actual model number.