Corrupt QuickTimes?

Hi- I am usually always able to solve issues with problematic footage- I've worked at a few post houses where fixing bad files were a common task and if there's one mantra I've prided myself on all these years, it's; "if it can be played, it can be saved."

So I've inherited this hard drive full of 30+ hours of footage for a documentary project- some P2, some XDCam, and of course.... a whole lotta HDV and Apple Intermediate.

I've gotten 95% of everything working perfectly for me. In fact, ALL of the footage has come into Final Cut without too much hassle. Only about a dozen random clips were causing "Some data cannot be read or written" errors when being copied to a backup drive.

These clips just happen to share the same DNA; 1080i60 Apple Intermediate Codec - so I'm assuming they came from HDV originally.

They all play fine in Quicktime and FCP, they can be edited and manipulated so long as they don't require rendering. Rendering them causes FCP to quit. Exporting or saving from QT fails. Simple copies on the finder level aren't working... I've even tried exporting from MPEG Streamclip which either Unexpected Quits or just errors out.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Going back to the master tapes is a hassle I'd really rather avoid... if they're even still around.

"Some data cannot be read or written" doesn't refer to a problem with the file; it refers to a problem with the drive itself. It sounds like either the drive with your footage on it or the drive you copied it to has some kind of a fault.

You can try a Diskwarrior pass to see if the data in those Quicktimes can be recovered, but in my experience the odds aren't great. Most likely, I think you're out of luck on those files.

At the very least, you should immediately move all the footage on the drive that's giving you problems to a couple of other drives for safe-keeping. All the footage you can recover, anyway.

I had a simlar problem a while back where I archived a movie to hard-drive;
while I sent the RAID drive for repair.

After trying to load back the movie to RAID, One file would come back with
"can not copy data, etc"...It could be played in QT, so I used QT to Save As...
or export, can't remember now...So maybe this is an option????




danajstrom Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi- I am usually always able to solve issues with
> problematic footage- I've worked at a few post
> houses where fixing bad files were a common task
> and if there's one mantra I've prided myself on
> all these years, it's; "if it can be played, it
> can be saved."
>
> So I've inherited this hard drive full of 30+
> hours of footage for a documentary project- some
> P2, some XDCam, and of course.... a whole lotta
> HDV and Apple Intermediate.
>
> I've gotten 95% of everything working perfectly
> for me. In fact, ALL of the footage has come into
> Final Cut without too much hassle. Only about a
> dozen random clips were causing "Some data cannot
> be read or written" errors when being copied to a
> backup drive.
>
> These clips just happen to share the same DNA;
> 1080i60 Apple Intermediate Codec - so I'm assuming
> they came from HDV originally.
>
> They all play fine in Quicktime and FCP, they can
> be edited and manipulated so long as they don't
> require rendering. Rendering them causes FCP to
> quit. Exporting or saving from QT fails. Simple
> copies on the finder level aren't working... I've
> even tried exporting from MPEG Streamclip which
> either Unexpected Quits or just errors out.
>
> Does anyone have any experience with this? Going
> back to the master tapes is a hassle I'd really
> rather avoid... if they're even still around.

If you can justify the deck rental, what about dumping all the bad clips out to HDCam or even HDV again? If they'll play, maybe they'll at least Print to Video...

JK

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SCQT! Self-contained QuickTime ? pass it on!