nix flix

Q: Why are all my .mov files clipped to 2.15g on an external HD?

I have many .mov files created on Final Cut Express HD and stored on external hard drives. I copied my files to another HD and all the files stop playing after  2.15 GB. Original files were <50 GB. Any suggestions?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Dec 29, 2012 12:15 PM

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Q: Why are all my .mov files clipped to 2.15g on an external HD?

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  • by rkaufmann87,

    rkaufmann87 rkaufmann87 Dec 29, 2012 12:28 PM in response to nix flix
    Level 9 (58,956 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Dec 29, 2012 12:28 PM in response to nix flix

    How is the EHD formatted?

  • by nix flix,

    nix flix nix flix Dec 29, 2012 1:02 PM in response to rkaufmann87
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 29, 2012 1:02 PM in response to rkaufmann87

    What is EHD? All of my videos were shot in HD and edited in HD. Used Final Cut to export QT (1920 x 1080) .mov files. I burned Blu-Ray and DVD disks and it all looked great but after I moved the files to another HD (Western Digital) the file sizes are shown as 2.15 GB. When I open up the .mov file in QT, it stops playing after 2.15 GB (few minutes) but the movie is an hour long. "More info" shows the correct lenghth and so does QT. I have no clue how to fix this.

  • by crh24,

    crh24 crh24 Dec 29, 2012 2:30 PM in response to nix flix
    Level 3 (924 points)
    Dec 29, 2012 2:30 PM in response to nix flix

    nix flix wrote:

     

    What is EHD? All of my videos were shot in HD and edited in HD. Used Final Cut to export QT (1920 x 1080) .mov files. I burned Blu-Ray and DVD disks and it all looked great but after I moved the files to another HD (Western Digital) the file sizes are shown as 2.15 GB. When I open up the .mov file in QT, it stops playing after 2.15 GB (few minutes) but the movie is an hour long. "More info" shows the correct lenghth and so does QT. I have no clue how to fix this.

    EHD-external hard drive. Some formats limit the size of files. The answer to the question would eliminate or point a finger directly at the hard drive.

     

    The metadata showing the true length wouldn't apply here as the metadata is at the front of the file and wouldn't have been chopped or modified by the copy to the WD hard drive.

     

    FAT16 has a 2GB limit and FAT32 has a 4GB limit thus the question what is the format of the EHD?

     

    I routinely reformat all of my purchased external hard drives to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) before use.  For the limits on this format see this knowledge base article.

  • by rkaufmann87,

    rkaufmann87 rkaufmann87 Dec 29, 2012 5:02 PM in response to nix flix
    Level 9 (58,956 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Dec 29, 2012 5:02 PM in response to nix flix

    To learn how your EHD is formatted, locate it in Finder then type Command I (I as Ivan) and it will tell you the format scheme.

  • by nix flix,

    nix flix nix flix Dec 30, 2012 9:23 AM in response to crh24
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 30, 2012 9:23 AM in response to crh24

    Thank you for your help. I am not knowlegeable in this area, so please stay with me. I checked the EHD under Disk Utility and the HD Format is shown as MAC OS Extended (Journaled), Size 100 MB, single partition. How do I change this to allow larger files, up to 100 BG? Can I restore my old files to their original size?

  • by nix flix,

    nix flix nix flix Dec 30, 2012 9:41 AM in response to rkaufmann87
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 30, 2012 9:41 AM in response to rkaufmann87

    Thank you for your help. I am not knowlegeable in this area, so please stay with me. I checked the EHD under Disk Utility and the HD Format is shown as MAC OS Extended (Journaled), Size 100 MB, single partition. How do I change this to allow larger files, up to 100 BG? Can I restore my old files to their original size?

     

    The Command I did not help me with the EHD Format. Disk Utility did as noted above. Where do I go next?

  • by eduaed999,

    eduaed999 eduaed999 Dec 30, 2012 10:35 AM in response to nix flix
    Level 1 (135 points)
    Dec 30, 2012 10:35 AM in response to nix flix

    Go to disk utility. Select your external HD. Erase partition. Then create new partition mac extended journald using all the disk space.

  • by nix flix,

    nix flix nix flix Dec 30, 2012 1:36 PM in response to eduaed999
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 30, 2012 1:36 PM in response to eduaed999

    Hi, thanks for your help. I set it up without a partition and did "Verify Disk" on Disk Utility. Partition map is OK. Seems to be working fine. Longer .mov files still play back only thye first 2.15 GB but QT shows the progresss bar moving but the image freezes. The file seems to be there. Any way to recover?

  • by eduaed999,

    eduaed999 eduaed999 Dec 30, 2012 2:55 PM in response to nix flix
    Level 1 (135 points)
    Dec 30, 2012 2:55 PM in response to nix flix

    did you before store these files on  disk with Fat16 so that they got truncated or corrupted?

  • by nix flix,

    nix flix nix flix Jan 4, 2013 9:59 AM in response to eduaed999
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 4, 2013 9:59 AM in response to eduaed999

    Sorry for my delay. Yes, the files were stored on a 1TB Western Digital HD and unfortunately it was formatted as MS-DOS (FAT). I copied all the files over to another drive formatted as a MAC Extended (Journaled) drive. Then, I reformatted the 1TB drive to MAC Extended (Journaled). Now, if I try to play a QT movie from the copied files, QT plays back the first 2.15 GB then it says, Final Cut files are missing. I thought that .mov files are self contained and do not rely on pointers to other files.

     

    My objective is to be able to recover my .mov files, burn a Blu-Ray disk of each one then delete the whole mess. Any suggestions?

  • by eduaed999,

    eduaed999 eduaed999 Jan 8, 2013 7:16 AM in response to nix flix
    Level 1 (135 points)
    Jan 8, 2013 7:16 AM in response to nix flix

    Your files have been truncated for good if you had them on FAT. They only seem to be larger.

    Your only way of recovering is to somehow get to the files before they were copied to FAT.