Does anyone have any advice about playing the .mov format video on a Mac? (in this case Intel powerbook with Snowleopard)
I understood that the .mov format was actually an Apple movie format, so it’s strange that when I try and play a movie downloaded from my Canon FS100 camcorder, it says no go - or more specifically “The movie is not in a format that QuickTimePlayer understands”
Sheesh, if a Mac can’t understand a format devised by its own maker, where the hell are we!!
The movies can’t be opened on VLC or Perian either. They playback quite happily on the camcorder and have obviously been recorded on the SD card it writes them to.
Anyone help fathom the mysteries of the .mov format?
Mov is a “wrapper”, and inside it you will find a loose confederation of codecs. Codec is short for compressor/decompressor, and this is where the real work is done on any appreciable level. The issue here is that your camcorder is compressing the video in a format which cannot be decompressed on your Mac. The challenge will be to wade through the amusingly-translated manual for the camcorder and see which one it uses. Macs are used for an overwhelming majority of professional tv and film productions. So it would be pretty rare to find a format without a matching QuickTime codec.
Hugh is it certainly .MOV and not .MOD? I had a quick look on the
internet and it seems a lot of questions were being asked of the Canon
FS100. But a lot of answers to.
Just do a search for
Thanks Walter, I will wade through the ‘amusingly translated’ manual - which I don’t actually have but am sure I can find online.
Adam, yes it is .mov - iMovie was able to recognise the camera and download the clips, and in the events folder where it stores them they are all listed as clip-2010-08-26.mov or similar.
Unfortunately, although iMovie can apparently download the clips, it can’t actually recognise them for use! So I have an iMovie ‘event’ called Canon FS100 but the clips window for that event says ‘no matching video’.
I did ask Canon about this, thinking they would know their codecs inside out. But they just disclaimed responisbility and laid the blame fairly and squarely at Apple’s door! A typical corporate stance these days, - if it looks like being hard work, blame someone else!
Download and install Handbrake (free, open source) and see if it can
open the file and convert it to another more usable format. That app
is most commonly used to open up VIDEO_TS files from DVDs and turn
them into QuickTIme for your iDevices, but it’s pretty resourceful, it
might be able to help.
Also, if you haven’t already, purchase the $29 QuickTime Pro key from
the Apple Store. That unlocks a lot of hidden powers in QuickTime
itself. Since iMovie depends on QuickTime for its codecs, you just
might get lucky and be able to use these movies in iMovie after you do
that.
I stand corrected, they ARE .mod files. In fact when you look at the card it’s holding .mod files and a corresponding .moi file for each one, ie. you get MOV006.MOD and MOV006.MOI. No idea what they are!!
Sorry, not sure where I got the .mov extension from? Maybe changed the extension manually ?
Thinking I might be out of date I updated iMovie (which it suggested on opening). But no improvement.
Also tried importing the files using a utility called FootTrack, but that doesn’t recognise them either, and says they are not a ‘valid movie format’.
Thanks for the link chuckamuck - I downloaded the trial and it does what’s needed rather nicely, albeit very very slowly! It may be worth it at £20, we’ll see.
Walter, Handbrake also did the trick - rather more quickly, for free, but with fewer output formats, efectively only MP4. However I can now get the footage into iMovie or Premiere!
So there are solutions. Sadly they all require a considerable amount of work and time before you can even begin to edit your movies - another layer of procedure for conversion which is a huge load on the workflow efficiency.
I’m not sure, maybe I should look for a cam with a more Mac friendly video file format? MiniDV imports nicely via firewire, but the cameras are somewhat large and unwieldy by today’s standards and compactness is actually important for my requirements. But I have heard that the MiniDV produces a very high quality digital signal.
I’ll have to investigate the Sony, Panasonic and JVC cams, I think. The Canon is very nice to use and great value for money, but the whole file format thing looks like it could really drag it down for a Mac user.
As video is more and more evident in web sites these days, do any other Freeway users have recommendations for Mac friendly camcorders?
I use (well, borrow from Ron) a Sony pro camera on the two occasions
per decade that I need anything more serious than my iPhone. I think
he paid more for it than I did my last car, but he makes commercials
and films for a living. Sony’s prosumer stuff is very nice, for quite
a bit less than their pro stuff. In the pro video world, there are
Sony people and Panasonic people. Sony looks nicer on screen,
Panasonic is more durable and less likely to break when you need it
most.
Walter
On Oct 6, 2010, at 6:45 PM, hugh wrote:
Thanks for the link chuckamuck - I downloaded the trial and it does
what’s needed rather nicely, albeit very very slowly! It may be
worth it at £20, we’ll see.
Walter, Handbrake also did the trick - rather more quickly, for
free, but with fewer output formats, efectively only MP4. However I
can now get the footage into iMovie or Premiere!
So there are solutions. Sadly they all require a considerable amount
of work and time before you can even begin to edit your movies -
another layer of procedure for conversion which is a huge load on
the workflow efficiency.
I’m not sure, maybe I should look for a cam with a more Mac friendly
video file format? MiniDV imports nicely via firewire, but the
cameras are somewhat large and unwieldy by today’s standards and
compactness is actually important for my requirements. But I have
heard that the MiniDV produces a very high quality digital signal.
I’ll have to investigate the Sony, Panasonic and JVC cams, I think.
The Canon is very nice to use and great value for money, but the
whole file format thing looks like it could really drag it down for
a Mac user.
As video is more and more evident in web sites these days, do any
other Freeway users have recommendations for Mac friendly camcorders?
Perhaps, for the ultimate ease of integration with a Mac, you can’t beat a JVC GY-HM100. It records to native Quicktime format internally so there is no conversion process needed.
