Corrupt File?

Hey All:

I recently ingested a few hours of raw footage into my
Lacie 180 gig hard drive - all the files were good, save
one 14 gig file - all were saved as a QuickTime, but
QuickTime refuses to recognize this file, even though
it shows on the drive as being a QuickTime in the little
info pane that Mac can show as an option. I'm running
FCP 4.5 on OS 10.3 I no longer have access to the footage
and I'm having a heart attack. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks and have a great day.

Stephen

Can you open it in QuickTime?

Is the external drive properly formatted?

Hey, Stephen, don't reply to the posters...you're QuickTime response just went to me! Reply in the screen at the bottom of the window!

He said

"No, I already tried that, QuickTime won't recognize it even
though it says it's a QT file."

All the files were captured in FCP using the log and capture window? It's not a copied file from somewhere else that might need a different codec?

If it was captured on that drive, then I'd lean towards derek's question...how is the drive formatted?

I seem to remember your name. Were you the DP on Amala Lane's Holding Still?

I'm guessing FCP is refusing to recognize the clip as well?

Try changing the name of the clip and make sure it ends in .mov. Sometimes QuickTime Player is fooled into thinking it can't open a file just because it doesn't have the right extension.

Were you using "capture now"? When FCP gets ready to capture on the fly, it creates a "file" as a buffer before it starts to capture. If the capture then fails for any reason, it leaves this large "qt file" that is "unrecognizable" to FCP and QT.


Maybe you got one of those. I'd just recapture. 14Gb file is only an hour, right?

Rick:

I was using capture now, the problem is I don't have
access to the tapes anymore. Is there any way
to make this file recognizable to FCP?

Not that I know of.

But someone may know some way to hack into the header information using Terminal. You've reached the end of my techie dorkness! I'm going back to being an artist!

> I was using capture now, the problem is I don't have access to the tapes
> anymore.

Boyoboyoboy.
Is there only one "version" of this QuickTime file, rather than multiple files with an -av tag on them?

I suppose my suggestion of renaming the file with an .mov extension didn't work?

Do that first, the select the file and press APPLE-I. What applications are listed as being able to open this file, if any?

A 14GB file size suggests that the media is in there somewhere, but isn't in an FCP- or QuickTime-friendly format.