Thanks for your suggestions, guys.
Adding .mov does not help, and the files won’t even open in handbrake.
I don’t know too much about how it was digitized. The people who worked on it back then do not work here anymore.
One editor here suspects it might be dvcpro, but the metadata doesn’t say codec. Can you force codec metadata on to a file?
I pretty sure it was imported and edited on a mac using some version of fcp. I have an iMac g5 at home with an old tcp on it, I will bring the disk home and try there. Good idea.
Also uploading a file and letting the internet try to crack it is an excellent idea. Thanks.