Invalid public movie atom was found in movie.

I am having an issue with Quicktime files opening and reading in all of the following:
- Quicktime Player 10
- Quicktime 7.6.6
- Final Cut Pro 7.0.3
- MPEG Streamclip

They are unreadable in my computer, and I get the following error message: "Invalid public movie atom was found in movie."

I am using a 32GB card reader to record HDV 1440x1080-60i footage and just recently, the files are unreadable on my computer, and the only programs that DO read them are:
- VLC Player
- Handbrake Encoder (freeware)

I have tried the following in order to open the files in FCP:
- Convert to .m4v in Handbrake (H.264 codec)
- Convert to .m4v in Handbrake (MPEG-4 (FFMPEG) codec))
- Converted to .mkv in Handbrake
- Took all the above and exported as Quicktime Self-Contained movie in both Quicktime 7.6.6, and MPEG Streamclip.

It plays fine and looks great with what appears to be no quality loss in all programs EXCEPT FCP...the H.264 codec is apparently not made for editing purposes...it's a exporting format. So my question is, well...what can I do? I need to edit these files and FCP won't handle them...

Help?

> I am using a 32GB card reader to record HDV 1440x1080-60i footage and just recently

You didn't name the actual camera you used. Are they actually H.264 movie files? Or are they AVCHD files? A large portion of tapeless consumer cameras shoot to AVCHD these days, and AVCHD can't be converted with any of the software you're naming above except via Final Cut Pro's Log and Capture, with the proper AVCHD plugin installed.


www.derekmok.com

Canon XH-A1 shot in HDV, 1080i, 60. Recorded firewire direct to DTE flash card. Card set to HDV/Quicktime record format.
Done this many times. It's just a DTE card recorder made by Focus Enhancements. This has been a regular routine shooting/workflow method until lately

Quicktime repair by Digital Rebellion can sometimes fix this error and resotre your files.

thx...
I mean come on....just what you want to see at 3 AM right?

Yeah, nasty! Let us know how you get on. The fact that the workflow was solid and then went wonky is worrying.

Dead in the water.

2 jobs sitting here. One, I've already been paid for. Can't even open the files in compressor. Can only read the files in VLC. Faced with transcoding the project files using Handbrake and transcoding again using Compressor to take the H.264 files and make Pro Res out of them. Don't know at this time how much of a hit I'm going to take in quality, let alone the amount of time to do this for a 2 hr event.
Contacting the DTE manufacturer hoping for any help there. But, this workflow has been fine for 2 years.

Apple Support Community discusses this here. If you can boot from a backup drive made before the mentioned updates you can probably resume work.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Well, evidently, at least for my particular problem with Focus FSH-200 DTE compact flash recorder, Apple did them in. I'm posting a copy of the support notice in a new post on this forum

I had a similar issue with ProRes 4444 files shot on the Arri Alexa. After poking around Creative Cow's forum and Apple Support Communities, I determined the problem may be with iTunes 10.5 or Security Update 2011-006 - one or both of these is causing random Quicktime files to return the "invalid public movie atom" error. I was in the middle of editing a film on FCP, took a two week break, and came back to this error. In that time I installed both updates; that was the only thing that changed on my system. I did a reformat and reinstall of Snow Leopard (but did NOT update to iTunes 10.5 or apply the 2011-006 Security Update), reinstalled FCP, and the Quicktimes worked. They open and play down without a problem just as before.

I would avoid upgrading to iTunes 10.5 and the Security Update for the time being. Hope this helps, and here's another discussion on the same issue:

[discussions.apple.com]