I recently tried playing a QuickTime video that dates all the way back to 1996. According to Finder, the file is about 60 MBs in size, so it’s definitely not empty. It still has its original date stamp, so I assume that the file overall is stil in its original “shape.”
Alas, VLC Player displays a 0:00 duration for the file. Clicking the Play button fails immediately.
An online search found very few suggestions that did not also point to VLC Player. All of them refered to video repair applications whose sites definitely do not look trustworthy, so I don’t want to even try to install them on my machine.
Any ideas how I might be able to access the contents of that video, short of trying to get access to an older Mac?
QuickTime files, like their Windows “AVI” equivalents, are “container” type files. The video and audio content may be in just about any format. If you can find out how the content is encoded, then that should help you find software that can play it.
I agree with @Dafuki that HandBrake may be a good first step.
I’ve just tried to open the file in Handbrake, and it states that it can’t find a valid source.
Considering how old the file is, I now wonder if its data might have been stored in its resource fork, and that that fork got lost or corrupted somehow. Maybe it’s time to look into older backups if I can locate them…
Unfortunately, that application couldn’t open the file, either. But, man, it’s gorgeous. I might very well move away from VLC and use IINA instead. Thanks!
If VLC, HandBrake, and IINA all fail to open it, it’s almost certain that the file either is damaged or doesn’t actually contain any video data (or both). Best at this point to look for an older copy that may still be intact.
There is a slight chance that Quicktime 7 will open it. It is a 32-bit app that I still have on my “media” iMac running Mojave. It is able to open some old MOV files that the modern Quicktime is not able to open.
I did look for ways to “open the package contents” of Quicktime files in case a video file could be recovered but there is nothing on my iMac to do this. Maybe a 3rd party app is available but I agree with your caution about using recovery services.
I thought I read here on Talk recently, that .mov files that won’t play in releatively recent MacOSes/QuickTime versions, could simply have their file extension changed and that would work.
At the time I tried it on a couple of files and it did work.
Maybe worth a shot.
Or if you have an older Mac available, yes earlier versions of QT might work and maybe can export/save in other formats that would be playable by QT/HB/VLC & Co. Looking forward to reading the eventual solution!
@raykloss , I searched Talk for various keywords and haven’t yet found the Topic I thought I recalled. Then I searched The Interwebs and came across a similar Apple Discussions post from 2020 where two ‘Level 10’ responders wrote that changing extention from .mov to .mp4 makes the video playable.
Not sure if this helps @jochen 's situation or not…
I helped my wife with a project she was doing, and shot some “QuickTime Virtual Reality” files about 30 years ago. They are really cool, but can only be played with Quicktime 7. I can’t tell you how annoyed I was when Apple decided to abandon this technology that they had promoted so strongly. Of course the QTVR movies are embedded in Multimedia Director presentations, so that also limits their playability! FWIW, these QTVR files had a “.mov” extension, if I remember correctly.
This is why if one has older files it’s good to keep updating them so they’ll work with contemporary software. Also, keeping older Macs in working condition with older software is very helpful. In this case an older Mac running Snow Leopard, with iMovie or just QuickTime Pro 7, should hopefully be able to open and then export your file to a more modern QT or MOV format.
You may want to get a copy of Invisor. It’ll at least tell what the state of the file is. Could be an oddball codec. Could be corruption. You’ll at least know what it is.
