I have a guy who does some filming and editing for us. He films using Sny and Panasonic cameras. All the footage is loaded into his Mac and edited using FCP 7. The final footage is exported using File-Export-Quicktime file.
What we are then left with is a QT movie, 1920 x 1080 , Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) Linear, PCM, HD, file.

We transfer this to a portable hard drive. I then copy the files into my MacPro and author both a Blu-ray disc and a normal DVD using Encore.

Up until now we have had no problems, however the last two projects have caused us some problems. Once the footage is transferred to my system, when it plays back in either Quicktime or Encore there are some very bad artefact lines appearing in parts of the footage. If I burn a disc it's even more pronounced.
We can play back the footage directly on his system from the same portable hard drive and there are no issues.

Nothing has changed settings wise since he started working for us 2 yrs ago.

I am assuming there is an issue with my system but cannot come up with a solution. Could it be my video card is on it's way out or could it be a USB issue? We've tried a different portable hard drive and still have the same problem?

Any helpful suggestions would be gratefully received.

Regards, Carl

Why are you assuming it's your system with the problem. Does the QuickTime file play OK in other computers besides the one it was made on?

Recently I had to work with a ProRes file from another country, made in FCP7, that had strange gamma issues on my client's computer when it was rendered but not while playing it back in any program except MPEGStreamclip. The problem was isolated to transitions and still frames. Getting a new file was not possible. My client has FCP7 but I have FCPX and Compressor 5. While I could also see the problem in MPEGStreamclip I was able to use Compressor to export a new ProRes files that did not have any gamma issues.

I was only assuming it was my system as it played back perfectly on his system even from my Hard Drive. I've not been able to check it on anyone elses computer yet.

But lets assume then, that it's not my system where the problem lies. What can be causing the problem, everything plays fine on his system, the file copied to portable HD plays okay on his. It's only on transfer to another computer we get the problem.

It has been suggested that the recording levels of the audio are to high so we are doing a no sound version tonight to see if that makes any difference.

It.might be worth re loading quicktime or if you have fcp on your system trashing your preferences and allowing the system to re calibrate the RT playback profile.

Okay an update.

Ive gone back to my editors place with the edited footage which we exported to my hard drive. We connected to his system again and played back the footage. His system defaults to QT 10. When we played it in QT 7 the same issues presented themselves as on my system. So we checked some of the raw captured footage in QT7 and got the same result...bad! The strange thing is in FCP 7 and QT 10 it plays fine.

We re-ported the footage from FCP again but added a de-interlace filter and voila, it now plays on QT7 fine and also on my system fine.

Whats strange is that no settings have been changed to his or my computer and we have never had this issue before, at least we have found a solution. Be interested to know what the issue was though.
Your suggestion might be valid Gary.

It is probably that a system update has occurred and QT 10 has also had an update to enable the codecs to work correctly with it and QT7 has not had the update.

You find this a lot with systems as legacy software such as QT7 gets left behind as the OSX system or QT10 develops.

I had a similar fault on my old powerbook G4 and a re-install of QT7 and Tiger re-set it as one of the codecs must have been overwritten by a newer version designed for use with QT10.

Sadly this will get worse as apple pile all the updates and development to make QT10 work better with FCPX and FCP7 / QT7 gets left static development wise.