FCP Mov's to play on PC
 

Hi Guys,
I have recently filmed a wedding where the Bride wants the digital files transferred to a portable HD so she can watch the unedited content. I transferred them to a 250g portable drive for her. She can't open the files on the PC. She has used macdrive 7 in order to have them read by the PC. She tried quicktime but can't seem to play them. Is there anything we can do. I shot on an XH-A1 in HD and uploaded to the mac with an hv20 normal capture and log setting. Thanks for any suggestions

Jb

Nothing short of buying an $80 codec, which is what I did. Even then, the codec was slow and buggy and I may just end up dragging the files back to the Mac where they'll be recoded as H.264 files.

If I read this correctly, you output the capture scratch files direct to an exernal drive. From FCP these are plain old .mov files, so maybe it's some mismatch with the data drive you gave her and macdrive7 installed on the pc...

Maybe you could put a sample file or two on a dvd data disk (not a video dvd for a dvd player, just burn the file to a dvd disk) and let her see if she can see that with quicktime...if so the problem is somewhere in the handoff with the external drive you gave her...if not, maybe she doesn't have quicktime or there's some problem with her computer.../ Battle Vaughan/miamiherald.com video team

The files are over 8g in size so they wouldn't fit onto a dvd. She said she tried quicktime and requires the hdv6 codec but is unable to get it. Without having to re-encode the files what are my options?

JB

I dragged and copied the files from one drive to another. The new drive was formatted mac osx journaled. The files play fine on my macbook pro using quicktime.

JB

HDV6 - that's the problem I ran into. You need to buy the $80 codec. That's the only non-transcoding solution.

Though if I were you, I'd transcode.

How would I transcode?

Brian's note made me curious, ran a test, and sure enough, quicktime on a pc here doesn't have a codec for the capture files...never knew that, we exchange mov files exported from fcp timeline to quicktime movies all the time....so the raw mov files are something that pc doesn't recognize.

Suggestion: use VisualHub or another batch converter (inexpensive shareware, although VisualHub is no longer sold) and convert the clips to wmv or avi or whatever her pc will support in windows media player....

Here's one that works, but it doesn't batch...but it's free...MPEGStreamclip (Squared 5 - MPEG Streamclip video converter for Mac and Windows) drop clip on the window, select file > export to avi, select 1920x1080 (otherwise they will be squeezed 1440x1080) The default apple photo jpeg compression played back on my pc in windows media player. If you have Flip4Mac installed you can also make WMV files. The clips transpose very quickly on my Mac (quad, 8 megs). Transcoding seems like the only reasonable answer.
Sorry I didn't know about the .mov codec in my first reply, we EXPORT mov files to pc with no problem thru Quicktime /make quicktime movie all the time, but never tried sending the raw clips...my bad... B Vaughan

Something I once did, so a person could watch the footage in high quality on his PC, was to use Compressor and the preset "H.264 for Apple TV". The person was then able to play it through iTunes on his PC at HD quality (transcoded from native HDV to H.264).

It's just one of many approaches open to you.

One of the things that really frustrates me about this whole thing is that for whatever reason, even though now that I have the codec, I -have- edited small clips out to .avi, .m2t, and .mp4(h.264) there are four files - all about an hour long, that for whatever reason, do NOT like being transcoded. They'll convert, alright, but I can't play the files with WMP, VLC, or Quicktime.

I'm reduced to copying the files back over to the Macintosh and doing a conversion to .mp4 there (the reason I'm converting is that I'm working with someone in New Zealand, and all the bandwidth there is data-capped. I think it's stupid, but that's the way that things go.)

Yikes- Attack of the HD Bridezilla. Don't forget to charge extra for all this...

Noah