iphoto won’t import mov video

Great find Dr. Martin!

I am not sure at all why this happened or why the above has fixed things for me, but it seems it has!

Two years ago we did quite a bit of exploring to understand, why this file matters. It is disconcerting, that a missing file in a cache should have so dire consequences. usually this file went missing due to house keeping apps, that clean caches, and in consequence, the videos would no longer play, for example CleanMyMac and other cleaners might remove this file.

This particular cache is special, it is only created, when the system is installed.

The tests showed, that for some users removing the xpchelper cache would prevent videos from playing, for others not. On a healthy system this file should not be necessary. A likely explanation is, that the system may have been modified by an older, incompatible kernel extension, that requires this file. An unmodified system should not need it. That is why I recommended to reinstall, instead to apply a band-aid and only cover up the symptoms by replacing the missing file.

Just keep in mind, that there might be a system modification that might cause problems later.

Same problem....and I do use clean my mac, so I'm betting that was my problem, also did the new OS update. I opened a new photo library and was able to import so it must be that the one iPhoto library cache that is corrupted. When I look at my backups, though, the cache folder is empty from all previous backups. Everytime I hope the first iPhoto library it has to update the files. I really don't want to start over with a new library, so I'll be interested in any repairs I can make....keep it simple if you can, and thank you.

and I do use clean my mac

Get rid of it. It's a waste of time and money and is worse than useless. It causes damage.

Where is your Library stored?

I Presume it's the default location in pictures, because when I added a library under pictures it added the number 2.

I was hopeful that this cache rebuild would fix this problem (which I obviously also have). But it did not. I tried twice with iPhoto quit and am importing 1 .mov from my iPhone 5 into an empty iPhoto library.

My iPhoto libraries are located on an external drive. I tried to move the blank library to my desktop. Got the same error. Unable to import / unrecognized format:

/Users/myself/Desktop/iPhoto Test.photolibrary/Import/Masters/Roll 1/IMG_4746.MOV

Also on 10.9.5, didn't have this problem before.

notes:

nothing unusual in logs matching iPhoto.

checked mod date of "com.apple.xpchelper.cache" after multiple rebuilds and it is current date/time as expected

What version of iPhoto?

What format is the External disk?

iPhoto 9.5.1 on OS X 10.9.5. The external disk is HFS+ format. But as I said, I tested on the boot volume, with a clean iPhoto library on ~/Desktop/, with the same results. I have not yet rebooted after rebuilding that cache; that's the next thing I will try.

Thank you so much cghrismartinphd. This was the simplest answer and it worked!!!!

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