Quicktime won't play HDV .mov

I put an example 10MB file here (there's not much content here, maybe a second of footage, but it still throws the same errors I list above). The file is from a Focus Enhancements FSH200 DTE machine, hooked to a Canon XH-A1.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3356957/20110721-203343G01.mov

I'd be curious to know if you can open it in Lion in any Quicktime capable app.

I thought maybe just reinstalling Final Cut Studio 3 would be the way to go, because maybe the codecs aren't loading for whatever reason, but when I go to reinstall FCS3, it just shows grey screens where I'd like to install things, probably because FCS3, and FCPX are already installed.

My next step is to wipe my Lion drive and start over from scratch like I was planning anyway. Unfortunately, this means that I have to make a long checklist of everything I need to re-do in Lion, so that I have all my capabilities that I had under Snow Leopard. I have a fairly complex web development environment setup and a ton of third party plugins for audio, video, and Adobe Creative Suite products that I'll need to keep track of.

That's odd about the file not downloading properly through chrome, and saying it's not safe to show.

I did the SendThisFile form on your website just now. Let me know if you see anything on your end with it--same or different.

I uploaded a flattened version of the same clip (the FSH200 doesn't seem to make mov files that are considered 'flat'). Can you also try opening that in Quicktime X or Pro?

The only reason I did this, is that I know FCPX does not like my non-flattened HDV mov files. It won't allow me to import them. Once I flatten them (simply open the clip and re-save in Quicktime Pro 7), all works well with FCPX.

I wonder if Lion is similar to FCPX in that manner--can't open my non-flat HDV files.

Thanks for your help with this, it is very kind of you.

As I understand it, a flattened Quicktime file is one where all of the information of the video and audio are interleaved in the data track. In a non-flattened file, this same data can be spread across a resource fork and a data fork, and can cause issues with certain applications. The files my Direct to Edit (DTE) machine makes are not flat. I think I can make my DTE create a different filetype of footage that'll work properly in Lion and FCPX, but my hours and hours of existing footage that is not flat will have issues.

Before OS X, I remember having issues sharing Quicktime files with Windows users; even if they were using Quicktime. The simple fix was always to flatten the file (usually just opening the file in Quicktime and then re-saving the same file--not re-encoding the file to a different codec or anything, just re-saving it), and the file would then be flattened and work in Windows. I've never had any issues with non-flattened Quicktime files in OS X until I downloaded FCPX on a Snow Leopard machine to test it out. I tried to import the media that works just fine in Quicktime and FCP7 into FCPX and it said it was an unsupported media file. Flattening that same file made it work just fine in FCPX.

It appears to have the same result in Lion--Quicktime suddenly can't read non-flattened files. I wonder if another good test of this would be to use iTunes in Lion. Usually, if you have a movie file in iTunes and add metadata or change metadata through iTunes on that file, the file is not flat. I wonder if Lion would then not be able to be read it?

I don't believe this to be a "Lion Quicktime not able to read non-flat files" anymore--I believe this is because Lion Quicktime can not read files that don't have the "ftyp" Quicktime atom (Snow Leopard seems to have no issues with files that don't have the "ftyp" atom). See my reply in an FCPX thread below:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3132042?answerId=15773243022#15773243022

I may not be correct about the FTYP atom, being needed in order to play a file in Lion Quicktime X:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3132042?answerId=15784097022#15784097022

I found a way to add Quicktime atoms in Lion, without Quicktime, so that they are able to be opened. There's a big caveat though--too big for me to trust this method.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3147038?answerId=15832435022#15832435022

Yes, I have Perian 1.2.3 installed, and am unable to open these files recorded on my DTE machine (Focus Enhancements FSH-200). It has to be something about the way the file gets recorded at capture that's incompatible with the new Quicktime frameworks (FCPX, Lion).