Unbelievable Incompatibility?!?!?

[David McClave]

OK, major issue for me. I'm a Mac guy. I'm used to just about everything working all the time. I had a client ask me to transfer 30 DV tapes to his hard drive, and after checking into it a bit, I though perhaps the Apple Dv codec MIGHT work. It turns out that not only does it NOT work, I can't seem to transcode from DV to ANY format that WILL work. I can't find any program that will open the files properly on a PC, and none on OSX that will transcode from DV to AVI with a codec worth a darn - any ideas? I have 2 days.

[Shawn McCalip]

Did you assign the appropriate file extension to the video files? When shifting material from a Mac to a PC, I've always had to modify the file to read "filename.avi". Macs, for some incredibly strange reason, don't put the file extension on the file. So when you transfer it to a PC, Windows doesn't know how to work with the file because it can't see what kind of file it is.

Also, are you capturing on a Mac and then transferring to a PC hard drive? Do you have the capability to capture on a PC so it "just works"? ;-)

Sorry for that last little dig, but I was feeling mischievous! At any rate, I've transfered files from Mac to PC several times, and I've never had a problem. I've also had very good luck converting captured video into Quicktime files that are readily viewable and editable on PCs. Are there any other details you can add about what you're doing that might help me or someone else on this forum?

[Laurence Kingston]

By the way, "DV" is not some strange PC codec. It is the light compression encoded by the camera itself. Quicktime Pro should be able to do the translation into the appropriate Mac format.

[John Miller]

If you mean you need to convert from raw DV format (which AFAIK FCP can create) to DV format AVI on Windows, you can use our Enosoft DV Processor. The capability to read/write raw DV files has been added. If you want to try it, let me know since it this newer version isn't directly available on our server but I can provide a link.

BTW, the "problem" isn't that the Windows side "simply doesn't work" - it's because BOTH platforms fail to provide the most basic interoperability for obvious (but annoying) business reasons. Apple have never implemented Quicktime to an acceptable quality on the Windows platform and Microsoft have never bothered to provide AVI capability on the Mac. Both container types (MOV and AVI) are well documented and both could easily be implemented on the "other" platform by a third party.

[Ervin Farkas]

FCP can trascode to DV-AVI, just do the appropriate selections. I just finished transferring DVCPRO-HD material to SD DV-AVI (on a Macbook) that I then edited on PC. No problems at all.

By the way, you may also use the QT JPEG-A codec or QT Animation, as long as QT is installed on the PC, it will work wonderfully.

You will, however, have issues with files sizes if you use a hard drive for the transfer... the only compatible formatting is FAT32, which has a 4GB file size limit. Save on the Mac instead, then network the two computers.

[Daniel Browning]

Originally Posted by Ervin Farkas

You will, however, have issues with files sizes if you use a hard drive for the transfer... the only compatible formatting is FAT32, which has a 4GB file size limit. Save on the Mac instead, then network the two computers.

In Leopard, I use FUSE and NTFS-3g to access Windows partitions; works great.