Black screen on .mov files

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Level 1

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Black screen on .mov files

Hello, I have very specific problem to ask you today, it's kinda long in description so let's get going:

Currently I'm working on movie made out of Fraps caught footage from game while on Windows (some raw .avi I guess - 1min=1GB) it was not recognised on my Mac by QuickTime as video file (even with Perian), however VLC played it OK. To work with it in Premiere (it did the same thing as QuickTime - do not recognise .avi, they use the same codecs I guess) I converted the .avi to .mov using SimpleMovieX, after that QuickTime played it no-problem.

However, after recent security update something went wrong with this, and now QuickTime can play both, those raw .avi as .mov made out of them, but sound-only, screen is black. Needles to say that Premiere is also pretty much useless. But VLC still plays those as it did. Oh, I can play any other .avi or .mov file in Premiere and QT, but not THIS ones.

I reinstalled Perian, updated QuickTime to 7.6.9, used various other small converting software all without succes.

So now I stand before you my Apple brethren, do any of you can help in this?

Can I uninstall that security update? Or perhaps there is something like FFDshow on mac? Anything?

Help?

Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Apr 17, 2011 10:49 AM

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Answer 1

Jon Walker

Level 6

19,489 points

Apr 17, 2011 1:20 PM in response to PioWare

do any of you can help in this?

First of all, AVI is a file container—not a compression format. Since you indicate, the file opens/plays in VLC, your first step is to determine the video codec that is giving you problems. Do this by opening the file in VLC and checking the media information and expanding the video stream. If the codec component is one commonly available for use on the Mac, then you can install it for use by QT. If not, you can try transcoding the video using VLC itself. If this fails, i.e., the output is visible but plays as though the frames had been re-ordered, as a last resort I would try transcoding the file using HandBrake.

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