Need a converter.
 

The mov files came from a sony pmw ex3 cam. Files play on mac but not win. i can upload to youtube and see video. i can put in vegas and hear audio. there must be someway for me to convert without having to drive back to Miami to have the Camera guy extract directly from the camera to my hard drive.

MOV files don't come from the EX3. The camera records MP4 files. The Sony XDCAM Transfer program is used to re-wrap the files into MOV format for use in the Mac but the video is still in the Sony XDCAM CODEC. To play those files, your computer has to have the XDCAM CODEC installed. FOr the Mac it's a plugin to the QuickTIme subsystem of the Mac OS.

To play those files, you need the XDCAM CODEC. I was able to install XDCAM Transfer on FCS 1. FCS 2 may have more support built in but XDCAM Transfer or Clip Browser should get you the CODEC regardless. If you don't require the original video format, you can convert the MOV files using Final Cut or Quicktime Pro. THe time it takes to transcode depends on how long they are. When you put it on YouTube, they convert it from the original to Flash or H.264.

Are you on PC or Mac? You mentioned Vegas so I think you're on a PC - or under Bootcamp/VMWare etc if you're on a Mac..

Got some bad news - there is no Quicktime XDCAM or EX codec for PC.

You can transcode them on the Mac to another codec that will be accepted by the PC. Other than that, there is actually sadly nothing that can be done.

If it's the other way round (you have MXF files, you need to edit them in Final Cut, you don't want Quicktimes) there is another program out there that does that (mxf4mac Plug-Ins for QuickTime)

But the best thing as an editor is ALWAYS get a disk image of the original card if you can, or at least a copy of the files replicating the whole folder structure. That way you can ingest in using your workflow, not something the camera man hands off to you.

Import one MOV at a time.
 

Richard,
I was having a similar problem. I found that if I import the MOV files one at a time, it works! I get both audio and video. If I try to import all the MOV files at once, it looks like it's working, but when I try to play the clips, I get only audio. Of course, this solution can be tedious if you have dozens of files. There might be some way to properly batch-import MOV's, but I haven't stumbled upon it yet.
Ken

usually for converting video to flash I use Macvide VideoFlash Converter ( MacVide: Mac Video Conversion, Mac Flash Conversion, Mac iPod Converter, Mac 3gp Converter )