Older .mov files on newer Mac OS versions.

[PapaPiccolino]

Hi everyone.

I have a bunch of older Quicktime .mov clips, all made circa 2000-2001. The audio in all of them plays fine, but there is no picture / video at all. When I use the "movie inspector" feature of QT, it tells me that the audio is Qualcomm Purevoice, and the video component is either Flash or Apple Photo-JPEG or Motion JPEG video. I have QT 10, QT 7 Pro, VLC and Mac Media Player, but none work. I also have Perian installed.

I am currently running Mavericks 10.9.5 on a Mac Pro 3.1.

If anyone knows of a way that I can view these clips properly, I would be most appreciative.

Thank you.

 

[fhturner]

Is there a short and not-too-personal one you could attach here? If so, I’d be happy to try to play or convert it and let you know what works if I succeed.

 

[PapaPiccolino]

Hi fhturner. That's a most generous offer. Thanks. I really do appreciate it.

I did, however, manage to find out that the only way to do it is to use an earlier version of QuickTime and convert / export the clips to something like h.263. Fortunately, I do have a G4 Titanium Powerbook with OS X 10.4 Tiger, and I have tried this process, and it works great. I'm not sure why Apple cannot maintain backwards compatibility for something like this. It can't be that hard, surely ?

At any rate, thanks again.

 

[jackerin]

Just out of curiosity, what does the older version Quicktime report the video format as?

 

[PapaPiccolino]

Hi jackerin.

The version of QT I used for conversion was 7.0.4. There's about 45 clips, so I can't check each one, but generally it showed the sound track as either IMA 4:1 or MPEG Layer 3, the flash track as Flash, and the video track as TIFF.

 

[philgxxd]

Didn't even know tiff is/was a thing in video.
Interesting.

TIFF Sequence

TIFF Sequences can be a bit more of a hassle, as they output each frame individually as a TIFF photo file. However, for longer rendering times where a render failure is a possibility, TIFF sequences are a great way to ensure you can start from the frame you left off at if necessary.
While a video file would likely be corrupted if interrupted, a TIFF sequence would save any progress you make. Sequences can be exported in other formats as well, such as PNG or JPEG.

...Just a random article by Google search...

 

[fhturner]

Didn't even know tiff is/was a thing in video.
Interesting.

Yeah, I didn't either. Guess it's a lot like Photo-JPEG, only even less efficient!

 

[Clarkk]

I would prefer something like .mp4 though.

 

[PapaPiccolino]

Hi everyone. The clips in question are a series of instructional "videos" on how to use a set of grunge maps for making 3D renders look more real. There are no moving images as such, just a series of stills with the narrator talking over them and showing the sequence of steps involved.

 

[sevoneone]

It sounds like the files you have are more like a slideshow with an audio track more than a video file which is a feature of classic QuickTime that has been lost along with things like QTVR.

Sadly QuickTime really only exists as the name of the video player app now and no longer the amazing bit of multi-media software it was.

 

[PapaPiccolino]

Hi sevoneone. Yes, a slideshow with an audio track is a nice way of putting it.

I agree about QT. Apple is just fundamentally a different company now to what it was back then IMO.

 

[dandeco]

I had a similar issue when I opened an older Adobe Premiere Pro project from 2013 earlier this year (CS5.5). The video files were captured using Roxio's VHS-to-DVD converter, and the QuickTime codec it used wouldn't work with the current Premiere Pro (CC 2020). So I converted them into a more compatible modern format in VLC and loaded those into Premiere using the "Replace Footage" feature, thus updating the video files to their newer format and retaining my edits!