HDV codec not found... but it was there at some point!

I'm missing my codec for HDV 1080p24. In fact, I seem to be missing all the HDV codecs.

First off - I'm running a new Mac Pro tower, 4 gig of RAM, the whole Studio 2 package, and FCP 6.0 (was running 6.0.1, but tried re-installing the software and haven't upgraded yet).

I'm trying to play back some footage that's HDV 1080p24, and it's worked on my system before. It's been about a week since I've worked on it, but it used to play just fine.

I have a client who has some old, non-updated Blackmagic codecs, and when I do work with them, I have to swap out my /library/quicktime codecs folder with a copy of their codecs folder. When I'm done, I figured I could just swap back to my original folder without a problem. Sadly, it's a problem.

So I've swapped out their codecs folder, swapped back in my copy, and now I'm getting that dreaded "codec not found, check that the hardware blah blah blah" and "out of memory" error. What's really baffling is that in my /library/quicktime folder, I have an "AppleHDVCodec.component" version 1.29, but no HDV compression options appear in Final Cut.

Thinking I did something wrong, or something got screwy, I trashed my preferences and re-booted. It solved nothing. I followed the instructions on the Apple website for re-installing Final Cut Pro. Still nothing. I upgraded to Quicktime 7.3, and still nothing.

Any suggestions? Any thoughts? My next step is to upgrade to FCP 6.0.2, but if re-installing (and hopefully I did it correctly, I followed the directions on Apple's support website) didn't work, then why would upgrading work?


Jeff

Follow up... I just got it working, but in a very un-kosher way.

I found a shareware app called "pacifist" that allows you to open up and unpackage program install files. I used this on my Final Cut Pro install dvd, and got the AppleHDVcodec.component off that disk. That codec was version 1.3, and now my video magically appeared.

So this leaves me with these questions, which might be tougher to answer:

1) What did I do wrong when I re-installed FCP, so that the updated codec didn't appear?

I trashed the preferences, trashed just the FCP program, and the installation receipts for Final Cut and all the other receipts installed within 3 minutes of the FCP receipts. That was done as per the Apple website, but did that screw up other parts of my FCP studio?

2) Why didn't the quicktime update update all those codecs?

3) Where can one go to get updated codecs? There has to be a better way to find this HDV codec than using a shareware app to pry into the FCP install discs.


Jeff