Help! QuickTime won’t play my JVC700 clips

[Jon Leyse]

Anthony,

If you have Quicktime and FCP installed on your Mac you should be able to play these clips without any other software. You don’t even need to drag them to a hard drive. You can mount your SDHC card via a card reader and play them right off the card in QT or FCP.

A couple more ?’s to maybe find the problem:
– Do you have class 6 SDHC cards?
– Did you find the Clip folder on the card and drag that to the Hard Drive?
– Are you recording in .Mov or do you happen to have the SxS adapter and recording in .mp4?

– Will the files play back in your camera fine? If they do, I would try it on another Mac with FCP and see if that works. Then you can determine if the problem is with the footage/camera or the computer/software.

If it helps, I can give you a dropbox location and you can send me a short test clip and I can see if it works on my system.

Thanks

Jon
jon@crash31.com

Jon Leyse
Crash 31, LLC
http://www.crash31.com

[Anthony Popolo]

Hi Jon,
Thanks for your very investigative response!
To answer your questions:
– I am using class 6 cards
– They are in the clip folder of the card…
BTW, the file hierarchy on the card that the camera creates is as follows:
PRIVATE>JVC>CQAV>CLIP>”movie”.MOV
note: also in the CQAV folder there are two more files and another folder. The files are:
MEDIAINF.XML and MEDIAINF.BAK, and the other folder is called INFO. Within that folder are .XML files whose name corresponds to each of the mov clips in the CLIP folder (the XML files are all represented by the FCP icon).

– I do not have the SxS recorder. The recording format menu option within the camera has “Quicktime” selected (further, it’s greyed out because there is no other option).
– The files play back fine in the camera, and even out the Firewire down sampled to SD (I currently have to record to DV tape as a workaround right now!!).
I do not have access to another Mac with FCP so I can’t try it out. I would go to the Mac store, except they will have the latest software loaded and tell me that’s the reason it works there (the perfect sales pitch).
BTW, the files load and partially playback in my QT viewer. The audio is heard and the playhead moves the duration of the clip, but there is no picture. The files won’t even open or import into FCP. An “unrecognizable file” error appears.

Some other info I’m finding out…
I originally posted this problem in the FCP forum, thinking it was a FCP issue, but I’ve learned some stuff there that looks like it be more a QT or OS issue.
For example. Some have mentioned that I make sure NOT to select XDCAM codec in the camera’s menu, but the camera’s menu does NOT have that option. It only defaults to Quicktime, with no codec option. I tried “get info” to find out what codec the camera uses, but it doesn’t specify.

I have uploaded a 15 second clip as created by the camera to the following link… The username and password are BOTH “jvc” (lowercase). The clip is just 15 seconds of an empty theatre stage with ambient sound.
https://www.sunnysideent.com/ftp_site/login.php

Thanks for your help.
Anthony

[Gary Robinson]

I thought that you needed the latest update of FCPro 6 to play the files.

Thanks,
Gary R.
http://www.sharpcut.com