Q: Final Cut Express and QuickTime

lafoxmd61 wrote:

 

I have FCE 4.0.1. When I export sequences as QT movie (not as self-contained movie) the resulting .mov file cannot be read by QuickTime.

Best practice is to always export the QuickTime as self-contained, without conversion. Once you have that file, then make the converted versions you need from that master file.

The QT player starts, says it is converting the file, then states the QT player cannot open the .mov file.

You need to have the correct codecs installed for QuickTime Player to play back. Go to the Apple menu, and choose software update. See if there is any QuickTime or ProKit updates needed for your machine.

It seems to be a function of OS X.  I was having trouble with iDVD, thus I upgraded to OS X 10.9.2 (from 10.7.x) hoping that would cure my iDVD problems.

Problems with software are almost never cured by upgrading the OS prior to resolving the actual problem, in 99 out of 100 times the problem is usually made worse.

You should not be using QuickTime X. You should be using QuickTime 7 Pro, which should be on your computer. Check and see if it was moved to the Utilities folder. It may be name QuickTime Player 7.

MtD

You should have Quicktime 7 in your Utilities folder. It will still play your FCE export.  Control-click the movie, choose Open with…, and go to Applications>Utilities>Quicktime 7.

Get the version of QT 7 for your version of OS X here:

http://support.apple.com/downloads/#quicktime

There have been many internal changes to QuickTime over the years, especially QuickTIme X compared to QuickTime 7 ... that sometimes lead to viewing problems with video files.  It's possible that by installing QuickTime 7 and viewing your FCE exported movies there will cure the problem.

On the other hand, there are other possible causes of this problem:

• Please tell us about your FCE project.  In particular, what are your FCE project's sequence settings?   (Control-click the name of your Sequence in the FCE Browser, select Item Properties and tell us what it says for frame size, vid rate and compressor.)   It will also help to know these same Item Properties for at least one of the clips in your sequence.
  

• What model Mac do you have and what is the history of FCE on it?   For example, did your Mac originially have Snow Leopard (10.6.x) on it when you first installed FCE?   Did you later upgrade to Lion and even later to Mavericks?    Or did you already have Mavericks on your Mac before you installed FCE?
  

• Is this a new problem?   Meaning, were exported QT reference files playing fine before, and now they are not?   If so, what may have changed in your Mac?  (Upgraded OS X, installed some new software, etc.)
  

• Does QuickTime X play your video ok if you export from FCE to QT Movie (self-contained)?

• Did you render & mixdown in FCE before exporting your video?
  

MartinR wrote:

• Is this a new problem?   Meaning, were exported QT reference files playing fine before, and now they are not?   If so, what may have changed in your Mac?  (Upgraded OS X, installed some new software, etc.)

• Does QuickTime X play your video ok if you export from FCE to QT Movie (self-contained)?

• Did you render & mixdown in FCE before exporting your video?

Yes, this is a similiar problem that I am having. I know my settings in my sequence AIC. Before I downloaded Maverick, all I had to do was export sequence as a Self-contained .mov and it was ready for QT viewing. Now, I get the converting from Quicktime Player. It seems that this extra step converting again is very inefficient.

So, to answer your question, no Quicktime does not play my export FCE to QT self-contained movie. I can export my sequence, but, then Quicktime converts it again. I just would like to bypass that extra step. Is that possible?

Yes, everything was rendered before exporting.

Unfortunately, I don't think you can directly get around this on Mavericks. There have been subtle changes in QuickTime X in Mavericks that appear to cause the reformatting.   It is a known problem in the QuickTime forums.  There may also be some low-level incompatibilities between your (generationally old) Final Cut Express and (very new) Mavericks/QT based system.

The only suggestion I can think of is this:  Install & use QuickTime 7 as an intermediary.  Export your movie from FCE, then open the resutling file with QuickTime 7.  Export it again, selecting passthrough for audio + video.   I hear that files processed this way open cleanly in Mavericks without QT X forcing another conversion.  It can't hurt to try.   (You might even try exporting from FCE to a QT reference file (ie non-self-contained) and using that in the QT7 reprocessing ... if it works, it will cut down the overal processing time from FCE to final video file.)

Hi, I recently upgraded to Mac OSX Yosemite and then downgraded back to Mavericks! I had to reinstall my Final Cut Express and finally got it to work.  But now that I did this, Quicktime 10.3 is no longer opening the exported self contained .mov files that I Exported as a Quicktime Movie from Final Cut Express 4.0.1

All of this you explained very well in your comments, just wondering if you had found a simple way around this, so that it can be back to the same way I had it before.  Quicktime never had to convert the video in order for me to play it, also in the finder, the videos used to play a preview by just pressing the space bar when selected, this no longer works.

I have reinstalled QT 7 Pro, but this doesn't really solve my problem, lacking a lot of the sharing and exporting functions to youtube that QT 10.3 has.

Any update to FCE 4.0.1 that you are aware of? any help would be appreciated, and no I do not want to upgrade my OSX.