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Pro Res 4444 QuickTime files over 1.4 GB won’t open on a PC
Has anyone seen this? We’re trying to get our movie onto a PC for Avid DS, but strangely, the PC will only open Pro Res 4444 movie files that are under 1.4 GB. Anything over that gets this curiously worded message:
“Error -2002: A bad public movie atom was found in the movie.”
I found very little of relevance in searching online. I tried one suggestion a few people mentioned: exporting the film from FCP without choosing “Current settings,” but instead re-selecting Pro Res 4444. Didn’t work. Just to rule out FCP entirely as the culprit, we tested our raw master PR4444 footage straight from an Alexa, and it had the same problem.
Any suggestions? (Apart from trying another codec.)
Thank you!
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21 Replies
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What disk format are you using to transfer the file? Is the disk HFS+ or NTFS. If it is Mac formatted, what software are you using on the PC? I presume you aren’t using FAT32 or any files larger than 4 gig would be spanned.
Have a look at the file names to make sure they aren’t spanning ie: files with the same name an _1, _2 etc meaning the large files are split into lots of smaller ones.
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Hi Michael. Thanks. The drive we brought to the finishing place is HFS+. The computer they transferred it to is running Windows 7 so I assume their drive is NTFS. It didn’t get split up.
Yeah, when I saw that a 1.2 GB test movie worked but that our 58 GB movie failed, first thing I assumed was that we were dealing with FAT32 and expected a 4 gig cutoff. Alas, nope.
Why there’d be a ~1.4GB cutoff is beyond me. They’ve had no problems with any QuickTime files in various other codecs. But again, we want to try to solve this without transcoding to another codec.
The software on the PC is the latest updated version of QuickTime for Windows, and Avid DS. (Though I don’t even know if they got as far as Avid, it may just have been QuickTime.)
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So it is codec specific. I wonder if that is some weird licensing issue. I would try to play the file in quicktime to make sure it isn’t an AVID issue. Might be worth contacting AVID or posting/searching this on AVID forums.
Is quicktime up to date on the PC? Have you tried to transfer larger files off the external drive onto the PC and run from there?
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Might sound silly, but does that file work on a Mac?
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Yep, QuickTime is up to date on the PC, they double-checked. No Pro Res 4444 movie file over ~1.4GB would open in QuickTime on their system — we tried over a dozen different file sizes from under 1 GB up to 58GB.
Thanks, I’ll post on an AVID forum as well. So far I’ve found nothing there or on Apple’s forums that proved useful.
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Not silly at all, Jeremy! We thought the same thing, and tested it on their Mac. Worked just fine.
At this point, no thought or suggestion shy of voodoo is silly.
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…And again, it wasn’t just the one file. It was every single QT Pro Res 4444 file we tried that was >1.4GB. And it didn’t matter whether the files had been exported from FCP or were ARRI Alexa camera originals that had never even seen a computer. Same results for both. All the files have played fine on Macs.
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Seems like it’s some sort of file system issue.
You said you sent them an HFS+ drive?
Do they have MacDrive?
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Surely this problem must have come up before with anyone using the Alexa and editing on a PC if it is a limitation that Apple has put on this codec or quicktime for PC. If anyone can test this on another PC with Win 7 and quicktime I would be very interested, particularly as Resolve for Windows in coming out soon.
I suspect this issue is specific to this PC.
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Jeremy: Right, I gave them an HFS+ drive. I don’t know if they have MacDrive, I’ll ask.
Michael: Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. We may have to go to a different finishing house. This place hasn’t dealt with Alexa/PR4444 footage yet. They’ve never had a problem with anything else, though. They are considerably more affordable than the big post houses around, which makes this a particular bummer.
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