Ok so you (or I) would think apple would at least let us open .mov files in final cut pro X but apparently the codec H.264 won't work. I get the final cut error message, "Final cut pro cannot open files in the "quick time movie format." Why isn't apple apple? So is there a decent way to convert the files into something fcp can work with?
iMac, OS X Mountain Lion, quad I7
If you right-click on a video file in the Finder and select Open with or use File>Open File you will not be able to select a video file. This is the same in every video editing application Final Cut Pro, Premiere, or Media Composer.
Yes, when I said Open a file I meant what the original poster meant that he could not do either of the two functions described in the first paragraph.
OK, we're in an Apple forum, so talk Appletalk. You now explain your statement:
No video editing application can open a video file.
as meaning that the right-click "Open With" command in Finder can't be used to open a video file with an editing application. That seems a fact about Finder, not the editing application, but it is not a fact at all. When I right-click a .mov file in Finder, "Open With" offers me a long list of applications.
The list includes Final Cut Pro. If I select that, FCP starts, and the video file is displayed in the FCP Viewer. Also, when FCP is running, File>Open File can be used to access video files. Here FCP is FCP7. Perhaps things are different with FCPX. Your statement says "no video editing application". Also my exercise was done in OSX Lion. Perhaps the Finder of a later OSX would behave differently. Maybe it is part of Appletalk that context is never indicated.
Tom W., if you really want to know...
Another FCP forum, LACPUG, is suffering from disuse and trolls, and I'm one of the old loyalists sort-of policing it. See for example: http://www.lafcpug.org/phorum/read.php?1,288204,288207 .
The latest troll (or fool) there is this Ballower: http://www.lafcpug.org/phorum/read.php?1,261516,288219#msg-288219 .
Ballower, posting in LACPUG's FCP7 forum, referenced the thread we're here in. When I clicked on Ballower's link all I saw at first was the original question and your original answer, like so:
If those three lines are the Question and those other three lines are the Answer, marked "Solved", then Apple Communities are in a bad way too. I was struck by the sentence:
No video editing application can open a video file.
as a pretty amazing thing for a Level 10 member to say.
I eventually pressed the "View answer in context" button and saw that there was more discussed, but the poor format which had hidden all that and sloppily credited the wrong post as the Answer, led me to reply to that one sentence.
I have learned from this discussion that Apple shifted its concept of "open a video file" sometime between 2010 and 2011, for its video editing program, not for its video player/converter. I don't know if Apple was following other softwares in doing this, or trying to lead them. I find the shift ridiculous, and not so easy to swallow as you do.
Dennis C.
I disagreed with your statement:
No video editing application can open a video file.
Now you have provided lots of information that supports my disagreement. All your examples of editing programs accessing the contents of video files are examples of those programs opening the files. That is how I, and most everyone conversant with computers, use the expression "open a file" -- gaining access to contents. The simplest programming language had such statements as:
You can mean something else by "open a file", but then please explain what you mean.
This strand began with the breathless report of an FCPX error message:
Final cut pro cannot open files in the quick time movie format.
to which you replied that no video editing application can open a video file. The poor fellow replied:
Ok so I misspoke a bit.
Do you mean by "open a file" what the writer of the FCPX error message means by "open a file"?
Not true. An application opens a file when it accesses its contents. Whenever an editing program imports a video file it accesses at least the video's metadata, which is file contents. When an editing program displays the video file does it access its contents? With Final Cut Pro you can say that it instructs another program, QuickTime, to do that. But not all editing programs have a separate player. And when an editing program applies a filter to a video it certainly accesses the file's contents. These are all examples of read-only access, but an editing program can also write-to the files that it imports. Some .mov files produced in ClipWrap are modified by Final Cut Pro 7 upon import. FCP7 just does it, without asking. FCP7 instantaneously modifies some of the .mov file's header and footer. After this, the .mov file has a new size and new timestamp.
When an editing program displays the video file does it access its contents?
Yes. That's what it does when it plays back the file from its library storage location.
With Final Cut Pro you can say that it instructs another program, QuickTime, to do that.
This isn't true. The FCP is its own player. It doesn't require the QT player at all. It requires AV Foundation, which is the the basis for audio/video playback is macOS and is built into the OS, but that's not the QT player, which is a separate front end for playback.
FCPX modifies many files when it imports them. All AVCHD files that are MPEG-4 for instance are rewrapped into the QuickTime framework when imported from a camera card structure. They appear in library storage location as .mov files. In addition the audio is converted from AC3 to Linear PCM. The QuickTime player doesn't do this, FCP does. The raw .mts files can also be imported into FCP, but they don't work well. ClipWrap (now EditReady) is still available and can be used to rewrap .mts files to the QuickTime framework, basically to do what FCP does when you import from a camera card.
Your mistake in
No video editing application can open a video file.
is failure to regard FCP7 as a video editing application.
Even when running OSX Sierra, when I right-click in Finder on a .mov file, "Open With" includes Final Cut Pro.app in the list of choices. This is because my computer has FCP7 installed on another volume and its association with .mov files is detected by the Sierra Finder. If FCP7 were installed in my Sierra system (if this is possible), then FCP7 would open the .mov file via the Sierra Finder.
Your earliest post is written as if it were a conceptual necessity that a video editing program cannot open a video file. This wasn't so in the FCP7 conceptual scheme. "Open a video file" had a meaning for that video editing program. Apple might have shifted the conceptual scheme for FCPX, but as long as OSX permits applications to have File>Open File there is no reason why other video editing programs can't use this to open video files. Whether the Finder puts that video editing program into the list of recommended applications for "Open With" for video files is just a fact about Finder. You can anyhow go to the "Other..." at the bottom of the list and choose the program there.
Other applications have "shifted" this concept as well, or never had them.
This is the Final Cut Pro X forum. I was trying to answer a specific question. FCP7 or any other application isn't really relevant. The purpose of the forum is to try to assist each other as users of this application.
Even if you go to Other and select all applications and select FCPX it will not open the file. Nor will other current applications.
It's at the whim of the application developers. For example, the curttent Filmora has a mode called "Instant Cutter" wherein there's an "Open File" box. There you can open an H.264 .mov file. It loads and you proceed to edit it, bypassing project creation. So this current program belies:
No video editing application can open a video file.
What is true in this case is that Finder's "Open With" won't let Filmora open that .mov file, because Finder can't choose the "Instant Cutter" mode. Look at more video editing programs and you'll find more peculiarities.
If besides FCPX "any other application isn't really relevant" to this strand, then I wish you hadn't make the overblown claim about all video editing applications. If you only meant all current video editing applications, then I wish you had checked more than three of them. We'd have been spared this long conversation.
CUrious why it was important to you to come back to this month old thread that seemed to have resolved for the OP, which really wasn’t at all about opening the file in FCP but about why the audio didn’t work in the application.
This is my list. It doesn't include any video editing applications.
Final Cut Pro cannot open a video file. You can import a video file into the application to edit it. The QuickTime player can open a video file. No video editing application can open a video file. They open projects or libraries or bins or whatever documents they use to store editing information.
Ok so I misspoke a bit. it won't import the file either. Rather it does without the audio track. So the codec is not compatible with FCP? How can I import the full file, audio and video. This is a .mov file f and the codec is H.264 .. it was taken by an Olympus ls20 linear pcm recorder. I am pretty familiar with final cut pro, do know how to import, about libraries, projects etc. however, again the audio track gets left behind.
I don't see the Olympus LS20 as a supported camera. It may be doing something in a proprietary fashion with the audio. Can you open the file in the QuickTime player?
I believe this is a codec issue, the file on my mac with "get info" says the codec is H.264, which seems to give a lot of us fcp users problems. I really appreciate your help Tom. Do you know how I can convert that to apple pro res (422 or?). Because .mov is a container, and the aspects can vary, I again think this is a codec issue. Do you know of a converter that will work with this? Any other thoughts????
How to open .mov files in final cut pro x
