I hate how iMovie wants to move your files into its own directory structure, which is slow and wasteful. This script creates iMovie events as hardlinks to my own directory structure. Hardlinks are requires so that iMovie will let you mark favorites/rejected.

imovie-event

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

# Usage: imovie-event SRC [EVENT NAME]
#
# Creates an iMovie event for all the .MOV files at "SRC".
#
# For me, the iMovie Events folder and some other rules are hardcoded.

require 'fileutils'

IMOVIE_EVENTS = "/Volumes/Photo & Backup/iMovie Events.localized/"

src = ARGV.shift
event_name = ARGV.shift

# If it's a GoPro conversion folder, use the parent folder event_name
unless event_name
  folder = File.basename(src)
  if folder =~ /Converted/i # My convention for converted GoPro files
    folder = File.basename(File.dirname(src))
    orig_dest = File.join(IMOVIE_EVENTS, folder)
    if File.exist?(orig_dest) && !File.symlink?(orig_dest)
      folder << " GoPro"
    end
  end
  event_name = folder
end

dest = File.join(IMOVIE_EVENTS, event_name)

# I tried using symlinks, but iMovie won't let you mark
# favorites/rejected if you do that, so replace with hardlinks
if File.symlink? dest
  File.delete dest
end

# Only look for MOV files - GoPro .MP4s need conversion
Dir.glob(File.join(src, "*.{mov,MOV}")) do |f|
  next if File.directory?(f)

  FileUtils.mkdir_p dest
  dest_file = File.join(dest, File.basename(f))
  FileUtils.ln f, dest_file, verbose: true unless File.exist?(dest_file)

  # Move over any previously-computed iMovie thumbnails from my
  # symlinks experiment to save time.
  thumbs = File.join(File.dirname(f), 'iMovie Thumbnails')
  if File.exists? thumbs
    FileUtils.mv thumbs, dest, verbose: true
  end
end