Major Problem with Avid Film Composer/Quicktime etc...

[Brad Simmons]

Ok guys here is my problem...I will try to explain this in as much detail as possible. Any information you could give would be helpful, as I need to finish this project for a client asap.


Ok, I was called upon to compress some trailers shot on 16mm film and edited in Avid film Composer. This was all done on a Mac. In the Avid, you can export small clips that need to be further compressed.


Problem is this: The exported clips are .MooV format. First of all, what in the world is that? Never heard of it before. And when I transfer these clips to my PC, nothing will recognize the file extension. After Effects, Quicktime, Sorenson etc will not recognize the file type.

Anyone know what the .MooV format is and how I can turn this into a .mov format so I can encode these clips?

Thanks guys.

[Jeff Donald]

MooV is Avid's proprietary codec. Quicktime and After Effects can import and export the format. It is a rather lengthy process and involves renaming the files (batch renaming is possible with ABFR). So, if you still need help post back and I'll write out the sequence.

Jeff

[Brad Simmons]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the response. I would greatly appreciate it if you could tell me that process.

One person told me that I could just force rename the export to .mov instead of .moov upon export. I'm not sure if that would work and I will have to wait a few days to try that because I won't have access to the avid until then...so if you could tell me that process you mentioned that would help me a great deal.

Thanks again.

[Jeff Donald]

What software do you have available on your PC? Do you have Quicktime and do you have After Effects? What format are you wanting to change the MooV files to? How many files do you have to change?

Jeff

[Brad Simmons]

Hi,

I have After Effects 5.5, Quicktime Pro, Sorenson Video 3, Adobe Premiere 6.

I want the files to be either in avi or mov format - preferrably mov so I can use Sorenson Video 3 to compress them for internet viewing.

I have about 4 files I need to change.


Thanks!

[Jeff Donald]

The quickest, easiest, best way to do it is to get a copy of the Avid codec. You can download the latest versions for Windows 2000/XP here http://support01.avid.com/support/Pr...256C13005F6DA2 This should enable quicktime to import the files and then export them in whatever format you need. I believe the files need to be renamed (extension) .mov on the Mac before they copy the files. Quicktime will still import the files without the name change, but it is very slow.

If you don't have Windows 2000/XP it can still be done through After Effects, but the render is very slow (15 to 30 minutes of render to 1 minute of .MooV files) Quality of the output will also suffer. I've found the Quicktime Animation Codec offers the best quality. The real key is to have your client rename the extension .mov

Jeff

[Brad Simmons]

Thanks Jeff I really appreciate all the help. I'll give this a try.

:)

[Brad Simmons]

Hi Jeff,

Sorry to be a bugger. I installed those codecs and no go for me. It still wont import into Quicktime Pro or AE whether I try importing the moov extensions or if I rename them to .mov

Tomorrow I will just tell the client to reexport the files as .mov extensions on his Mac, and then burn them on a cd again, then I will try it again on my PC. Hopefully that will work. :D

[Jeff Donald]

When your in Quicktime do the Avid codecs show up in the list of available imports and exports?

Jeff

[Brad Simmons]

Hi,

When I open Quicktime and choose import, the only options I get are

movies
mpegs
audio files
image files
all files


Actually just check out this image

http://www.fusionarena.com/forumpost/qt.gif

Is that what you are referring too? Those are the clips I am working with. Those are the clips that I changed the extention to mov, which still won't import.

Thanks again

[Jeff Donald]

I'm pretty sure they need to be named .mov on Mac then exported. You've tried importing as movies? How big are the files? You might want to import any format you can, then try to export to Avid just to see if you have the codecs installed properly.

Jeff

[Rob Lohman]

Make sure you follow the instructions on that AVID page and
install the codec in the right place! Otherwise QuickTime cannot
find it.

[Thorsten Schneider]

Would any of you guys still have the means of converting such an old .moov file into a usable format (eg. mpg or mp4) ?

We found 2 such files and even after extensive searching online it seems pretty hopeless to try to do it by oneself. (especially since we only have access to pc's)

[Bill Busby]

Originally Posted by Jeff Donald

MooV is Avid's proprietary codec.
Jeff

I know this post is ancient, but that's just plain false. I'd never heard of it either and a quick search produced this info:

"MOOV files are more commonly seen with a .MOV extension. ".moov" was originally used as the default Macintosh extension, and ".mov" was used for Windows QuickTime. However, ".mov" later became the accepted extension for both platforms."