Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Level 1

12 points

"Photos cannot play this video because the resource is unavailable."

I bought a new MacBook Pro last year and transferred everything over.

In Photos I have 34 videos and every single one of them plays except the one I care most about. It's funny because I would give up about 30 of the other videos to get the one that's not playing to play.

All of these videos were transferred at the same time to my new computer which is why I'm confused that all of them play except for one. And I remember playing the video recently that I can't play now. I watched it several times last year.

Along with the error in the subject line I'm also getting this error when I try to edit with Quicktime.

"An error occurred while preparing external edit. The operation couldn’t be completed. (Cocoa error -1.)"

I back up regularly and but I am unfamiliar with how to try to locate the file through Time Machine.

MacBook Pro 13”, macOS 10.15

Posted on Sep 6, 2020 4:59 PM

Similar questions

1 reply

PhillipU

Level 2

470 points

Sep 8, 2020 6:33 PM in response to yimmy

Do you use iCloud Photos? Did you restore this library from Time Machine manually or through Migration Assistant? I ask because if you use iCloud Photos and you restore a library manually from Time Machine or any other backup (CCC, Crashplan, etc.) you need to set the library as your system photo library in iCloud Preferences and make sure iCloud Photos is turned on. Otherwise, if you are using the optimize storage option in Photos, the full copy of the video (or photo) may not be stored on your Mac and the library won't know to go to iCloud to get it.

Also, if you use iCloud photos, check out if you can play the video on iCloud.com. Then you can be sure that you just need to fix your library's connection to your iCloud account.

If you don't use iCloud, it's possible that whatever you copied your library from was missing the video file from the library through corruption or someone manually editing the library contents in Finder. Generally, you shouldn't muck about inside of the file system of a photo library but in this case, if you know of a date that you were able to play it and you have a backup from that date, you may need to browse the contents of the library from that date to see if you can find the video file so you can re-import it. I'll hold off on specifics until you've considered the above, though.

"Photos cannot play this video because the resource is unavailable."