Quicktime "reference movies"
 

I'm collaborating with another fellow on a project. He's more of a noob than I am wrt non-linear digital editing, so I set him up using apple quicktime-pro v7. Of course, he went overboard and put like 9 minutes of video (intercut with still-bitmaps of CG-placeholders) together, synched to a boom-box playback of the score he wants to use!

Now I need to re-build all that in premiere (2.0). So I imported the .mov file, tried a test render and got an "unknown error," that seems related to the video tracks. When I razor out the placecards I can get it to render about halfway, but I just can't get the last 1/3rd or so cleaned up.

I've concluded that there is some sort of corruption in the .mov file. Using qt-pro, I've tried to cut/copy-paste the clips he chose into new files (of various formats) but then I notice a huge quality drop that simply shouldn't happen, so I'm in a pickle there. My buddy used bitmaps that were not 720x480 for his stills, which I suppose could be another aspect of the problem.

My last hope seems to be, failing all of the above, is that there could be a way to extract the time-code records of each clip that the .mov refers to (the file is not self-contained, although I have tried making it so to overcome the perceived corruption issue) so I can simply go back the DV footage and duplicate his cuts from scratch? The quicktime developer's website seems to suggest that it should be possible, but I'd rather not delve into a programming project if I can avoid it.

I think your best bet is to go back to the original DV source material. I don't think you're going to be able to do anything with time code, I'm no expert but I don't believe time code transfers when you render to .mov.

Best bet, since your collaborator did the original editing, is to have him sit down with you and pick out what he used as you both do a re-edit from the DV source.

I know that's the case when you render a self contained MOV file, but a QT Ref file is simply a list of command saying "take this many frames from this clip, now take this many frames from this clip..." It's essentially an EDL dressed up as a MOV file, so the data should be embedded in the file.

Now, how to extract it? I'm not sure. I, too, am not sure if it can be done, but it seems like something that would be feasible. I'm certainly eager to see if someone out there has a solution.

Thanks
 

Thanks for the replies.

I'm still persuing other avenues of research on this, but I must say I'm somewhat disappointed with adobe's implementation of QT support. For instance, why can't P import a "reference movie" as the individually referenced clips-- it creates a single clip of the full length and provides no options to alter that situation. Perhaps I should look into a software add-in project...