Conversion to Quicktime Movie Problem

[Craig Seeman]

Do you have Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 or higher on your MacBook?

You need Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 and up in order to have the XDCAM EX MOV codec on your system.
The alternative is that you can buy Calibrated Software MOV codec for Macs that don’t have Final Cut Pro.

[Scott Phillips]

Thanks for your response.
No I don’t have Final Cut Pro, I was hoping to do some limited editing in imovie.
After talking with a friend who knows computers but not this issue I looked for a codec problem and downloaded this:

https://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/calibratedqxddecode.html

Now I can sort of watch the videos but they have 6 gray stripes, 2 large horizontal, 2 small horizontal, and 2 thin vertical. Is this some kind of blocking mechanism?

They didn’t have the grey stripes when I watched them on her machine. Unfortunately she is going back to L.A. so I don’t think I’m going to have the opportunity to work this out on her machine. If I take my portable hard drive to someone else with Final Cut Pro will they be able to re-export the Quicktime movies in a format I can read? How?

I really just wanted some Quicktime movies or some other standard format.

Is there a way around this?

Thanks
Scott P

[Michael Slowe]

But Craig, aren’t they just standard QT movie files now they have been converted by the Transfer software which should play in QT as stand alone movies?

Michael Slowe

[Craig Seeman]

[Michael Slowe] “aren’t they just standard QT movie files”
???? No such thing ever existed.
.mov can contain an array of codecs. Just look a your Quicktime folder on your system. .mov is a wrapper almost like .avi is.

If you don’t have the codec it ain’t gonna play.

[Rafael Amador]

Right.
You don’t need the codec to run the Transfer tool and re-wrap the MP4 as .mov.
However you won’t be able to see the picture without the codec.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Craig Seeman]

VLC at least can play the MP4. It cannot play the file rewrapped as MOV though.
One more reason why people should deliver BPAV camera masters.
Once you hand over an MOV there’s hurdles all over the place for anyone who doesn’t have FCP 6.0.2 and up on their system.

If you can, get the original BPAV and you can at least view them in VLC. If the shooter tossed the BPAV, well they’ve just tossed your camera masters.

[Olof Ekbergh]

The “shooter” could also convert the .mov (if the BPAV is gone) to another codec you have like animation or whatever Prores codec you have.

How are you editing the footage?

Olof Ekbergh

[Craig Seeman]

We haven’t heard back from Scott but if they don’t have FCP on their system are they likely to have ProRes? Although I believe that codec is available as a download. Animation would work but those are large files.

AFAIK the OP was just trying to play the files in QuickTime.

It’s sort of like walking around the work to get to the other side of the block. Copy the BPAV and view in VLC. No reason to wrap to mov, no need to encode to another codec, no need to buy a codec plugin, no need to install FCP (on what may be a skimpy MacBook hard drive). Why make something simple, difficult.

Clean out the hard drive, copy the BPAV, install VCL and be done with it, if it’s just for viewing.

Alternately, if he wants to edit the files in FCP then install FCS 2 or FCS 3 (2009) and be done with it that way.

[Scott Phillips]

Thanks for all the ideas.
As you can see I did respond above but it was held for moderation. So just to repeat.
I downloaded the codec and can now view the Quicktime files but they all have grey stripes through them as if they were all sabotaged.
Update:
I have the BPAV files and I have VLC! That works, I can now view all the footage. Unfortunately I was hoping to edit them in iMovie ’09 version 8.0.5. iMovie doesn’t recognize the MP4’s in the BPAV file. Why not? Can I convert them? (From reading the Apple website it looks like Mpeg4’s should work in iMovie…but they don’t. I’m guessing that like QT movies Mpeg4’s are not all created equal.)

The titles of the files look like this MRSM0203_01.MP4

–thanks,
Scott

[Greg Booth]

Hi Scott,

The gray watermarks you described is the DEMO watermark for Calibrated{Q} XD Decode.

Per MP4 files – XDCAM EX MP4 files are not mpeg4 files. MP4 is a file wrapper (like MXF or MOV) and is not a compression scheme (which is what MPEG4 is) – MP4 files can store MPEG4 data BUT XDCAM EX MP4 files are MPEG2 encoded. It’s a little confusing but hopefully my explanation made sense.

Cheers,
Greg

Calibrated Software