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  1. Hi, Im doing a little video archeology on my computer. I made a video project in iMovie in 2003, it's really valuable to me. I decided to back it up by keeping a copy of the iMovie folder that has the project and all the files. I was an idiot because I also should have simply exported the completed video into some playable format like .avi but apparently I didnt because probably storage was expensive, I was kind of poor, and thought the original iMovie project would be the best format.

    I cant open the project any more on a modern mac, but on an old mac of mine that I dusted off from years ago, I was able to install iMovie HD 5 and that can open the project. All appears to be in order in that all the chapters are there, the titles, timing, transitions, etc., it loads all the files. Except, when you play the movie, it's just a black screen.

    It looks like it's trying to play it, or thinking it's playing it... the progress bar moves along, etc. But nothing displays. I tried also to export to video file, etc., it's just empty.

    So my theory now is probably, there is some codec somewhere that i had before, but dont have now, that is needed. I installed perian for mac but that didn't help.

    The video files themselves originally started out as a digital tape from a camcorder, connected to a macbook 17 inch via firewire. So maybe something related to importing camcorder data? Again this was in the year 2003, spring of 2003, so whatever camcorder formats would have been common then in camcorders with firewire export to macs would be the likely original format.

    I seem to be really close to resurrecting this project, which I would love to do... I think I just need to figure out how to get the video to decode properly and everything will fall into place.

    Any ideas? The various video files have no extensions. Just "clip001" etc with no extension. I dont know how to figure out what type of video file it is.

    However iMovie at least seems to think it knows what the length of the clips are... at least, in the project where htey are all joined together into a video, it seems to know how long to play each clip before transitioning to the next one.

    Any help appreciated! Thanks!

    John
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  2. Sounds like you don't have the actual media (the video and audio files.) How large is your project file?
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  3. Thanks for your reply!

    I do have all the actual media files, the project folder is 6 gigabytes.

    iMovie seems to recognize they are there as well, while it launches it says "loading thumbnail for <clip name>" and goes through all the video file names. If I rename one of the video files, for example, rename "Clip 01" to "xx Clip 01", then on launching the project it gives me an error "Unable to load 'Clip01'." and asks me to click OK or ignore all errors. So iMovie is looking for the files and seems to know they're there, but doesnt do anything with them.

    When I take the clips and drop them onto VLC nothing happens.

    Here's a screenshot in case that helps!
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  4. Check under the media tab as well and get the information for individual clips.

    Is your audio playing?
    Do you have Quicktime 7 loaded as well as QTX? I believe QTX does not have any DV codecs.
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  5. PC owner but found this link which may help you out. It concerns someone trying to get their films from iMovie 4 (2003-2004) running on a current iMovie version. Gives some info on file extensions and what folders to look in for your actual files. Hope this helps a bit

    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5904023?tstart=0
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  6. Mod Neophyte Super Moderator redwudz's Avatar
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    This thread would likely be better asked and answered in our Mac Forum. Moving it.

    Moderator redwudz

    And welcome to our forums.
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  7. Thanks to everyone for the awesome help.

    I installed Quicktime 7... I did purchase a Pro key but will have to engage in a new archaeologic project to dig that up from my old emails/computer backups, if it could help. I do remember buying it specifically because I had resisted buying it for so long, thinking Apple should just make all AV capabilities free/included along with OS and that not only was it rude to the users but actually kind of a dumb business decision, in my opinion at that time, for Apple to not just make their platform the best AV platform based on the original purchase price of the Mac, not requiring an additional $30. So I definitely recall caving in and buying it eventually, but will have to engage in more archaeology to find the key. (I can do it if it would help).

    Someone asked if there was an audio track- I am not getting any audio, I think it is combined with the clips in the video files.

    I also decided to explore the files themselves to get a clue of the format. Using a hex editor, I explored 5 files and found they all had the same first 8 bytes, then after that were different. The leading 8 bytes are, in hex: 1F07003F

    Googling those 8 bytes, they appear to be an identifier of a video format. There were only 9 hits, 3 of which were video related.

    Here's one:

    Here is the head of the video file:
    > xxd Matthew.mov | head -100
    0000000: 1f07 003f f878 7878 ffff ffff ffff ffff ...?.xxx........
    Another:

    Please add these to the registry (copy and paste as a .reg file then merge into the registry):

    Code:
    REGEDIT4
    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Media Type\{73766169-0000-0010-8000-00AA00389B71}\{64737664-0000-0010-8000-00AA00389B71}]
    "0" = "0, 4, FFFFFF3F, 1F07003F"
    "Source Filter" = "{F865C08E-7D36-4266-AE06-51AABD80EBD0}"
    And finally someone who discovered that their file was mangled by a 0x20 being appended to the beginning of the file, it was supposed to start with 1F07 003F.

    Searching for the Media Type identifier that someone seemed to want to associate with 1F07003F I find this:

    public static readonly Guid MEDIATYPE_Interleaved = new Guid("73766169-0000-0010-8000-00AA00389B71"); // Interleaved audio and video. Used for Digital Video (DV).
    Ok, so it appears these files are in some "interleaved audio and video" format, used for Digital Video (DV), which my old mac running iMovie HD is not decoding properly.

    So to do list now are ---perform more archaeology to activate Quicktime Pro 7, and ---Research what codecs there may be for Digital Video (DV) for old macs.

    Any further ideas from anyone VERY welcome!

    BTW I did of course just try adding .avi to the file and tried to play it in quicktime and VLC, both choked.

    Thanks again and hopefully this archaelogical expedition will be successful in the end!!!!
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  8. Explorer Case's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by someuser View Post
    BTW I did of course just try adding .avi to the file and tried to play it in quicktime and VLC, both choked.
    DV video is stored either as native DIF bitstream (.dv) or wrapped into an audio/video container such as AVI (.avi), QuickTime (.mov) and MXF (.mxf). The files with the “1F07003F”-header should go with a “.dv” suffix. That should help some applications in identifying the files.
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  9. Hey thanks for the tip! I added ".dv" to the source file names and then I am able to open them in many video players.

    So this is a big step forward. Basically when I made this video, mac OS was not as dependent on file extensions as it is now. File types/creators were stored as separate file metadata, not embedded oddly into the filename. In a massive step backwards, mac OS adopted the practice of storing file type as a few characters in the file name, then offering to hide that portion of the filename from users. Going straight from the future back to a more primitive system of bad design. Anyway now it appears these files were not being recognized any more...

    I now have the task of trying to figure out how to get the project to recognize all the renamed files. If I remove the old files and replace them with the renamed new files, then I wonder would all my edits be lost, ie what time to start and end clip, audio volume, etc.

    Anyway this is progress... making time for this a little at a time, thanks for the help so far.
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  10. Explorer Case's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by someuser View Post
    So this is a big step forward. File types/creators were stored as separate file metadata
    I think the Mac filesystem still supports the old way of type and creator code (you can assign it), but many applications don’t look for it anymore, discouraged as Apple intended. But perhaps iMovie and/or QuickTime Player 7 do take a hint from it, when the suffix is omitted, like legacy support? Nothing to lose in trying to add the type/creator codes.

    Code:
    SetFile -type 'dvc!' -creator 'Hway' ~/Desktop/myDvFile
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  11. excellent idea, thanks, i will try that.
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  12. Im a PC guy, but back in my FireWire days.. everything was DV so maybe check that? IIRC, to add to the fun, there was DV1 and DV2, or something akin to that.

    GL,
    Andrew
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  13. Explorer Case's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by VideoGuruDude View Post
    Im a PC guy, but back in my FireWire days.. everything was DV so maybe check that? IIRC, to add to the fun, there was DV1 and DV2, or something akin to that.
    Andrew, I think you may be referring to DV AVI type 1 and DV AVI type 2. I don’t think it applies to DV video in other containers than AVI.
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  14. Case, good observation... I honestly cannot reply on the details, its been toooo many years and I have no idea what the file extension was. I was likely AVI, but I dont recall.
    Thanks,
    Andrew
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  15. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    On a Mac, native DV usually is either raw dv stream as .dif or .dv and is intrinsically Type 1, or it is encapsulated in a .MOV containers, where it should be Type 2. Unfortunately, there can be variations (Type 1 mov, type 2+2?). Look up my past posts on the subject.

    Scott
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