Search the CONFOCAL archive at
http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal
Thanks to everybody for all of their comments!
To clarify what is going on:
None of my movies are corrupted. All of my movies play perfectly on an
old OS9.2 iMac running Quicktime 6.0.
My installation of Quicktime 7.4, and previously QT 7.3, seem to lack a
codec required to view my older movies. I have not yet tried reverting to a
QT older than 7.3. I am worried that this will goober up my nice new Mac.
The suspect codec is likely to be Apple's 'Animation' codec, which is what I
used to export all of these movies prior to 2004.
When I view the movies on 'fresh from the shop' Macs without outside
software, the movies are also not playing correctly. (OK. I snuck into an
Apple Store and checked the movies from a memory stick...) Therefore the
problem is not likely to be with any extraneous installed software or
codecs. It is most likely with the Apple standard Mac QT codecs.
I have QT Pro- the same problem manifests under normal and pro versions.
Graphic Converter is a joy. But it also appears to use the QT engine.
Therefore, every movie that is incorrectly read by the QT Player is also
'bad' in Graphic Converter. Same with VLC, which I also love, normally.
I have emailed Larry Jordan, and will let you all know if he has any
words of genius. I hope so!
Regarding file size: The files are only a few MB, so I rather hope this
isn't the problem. In any case, I can't compress them, since nothing can
read them, barring the old iMac with QT6.
Regarding alternate formats: Back in the day, when these movies still
worked, I exported several to AVI. The quality was reduced a bit, but it was
acceptable. These movies still play. Clearly, other codecs are more robust.
Nevertheless, these are the movies I have. I do not fancy retooling PPT
presentations with dozens of movies. Nor do I fancy having to move >2000
movies from my MBP to an iMac, batch converting to AVI, and then re-creating
every PPT presentations I've prepared since 2004! This is a huge backwards
compatibility issue for scientific data. I'd rather get the movies to play
with a repaired codec. Does anyone know how to raise such issues with Apple?
-Steve
****************************************************************************
Stephen C. Bunnell, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Tufts University Medical School
Department of Pathology
Jaharis Bldg., Room 512
150 Harrison Ave.
Boston, MA 02111
Phone: (617) 636-2174
Fax: (617) 636-2990
Email: [log in to unmask]
This is not technically a microscopy question, but I'm desperate:
I use a mac. I have hundreds, if not thousands, of videos exported into .mpg
and .mov formats over many years of imaging.
Of late, I have noticed that _many_ of my older .mov files are seriously
corrupted on the Mac. It's not the data. Archived movies are the same. It's
the player- Quicktime. It no longer can play the old movies. However, 2-3
years ago, before this problem was widespread, we exported several .mov
files to .avi. These .avi movies (fortunately) play just fine. However,
attempt to export the corrupted .mov files now yield .avi files that look
just like the .mov files- that is to say, they look like garbage.
I have attempted to revert to older versions of quicktime- all the way to
v7.3. No luck. They're still corrupted.
The corruption is not a computer issue. The same movies are corrupted on
many others Macs with current system installations.
As you might expect, this makes for less than stellar presentations, when
half of your movies crash.
Oddly, some movies exported on the same day, using the same software, will
play, and others will not.
Has anyone else encountered this problem on the Mac? Any thoughts?
--Steve
|
