Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > macOS > can't play videos from digital camera

can't play videos from digital camera
Thread Tools
fongyuen
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Oct 2006
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Mar 14, 2007, 11:04 PM
 
i'm not sure why this is happening but all the videos i take with my digital camera (Canon Powershot SD 630) i cannot view on my mbp or my wife's mb. when i plug in the camera, iphoto automatically comes up to import the files. when it gets to the videos, it freezes and the program locks up. if i use a card reader and transfer the video files to my desktop and try to use quicktime to play it, qt doesn't even come up, just a window saying "The application Quicktime Player quit unexpectedly." if i try to play the file with vlc, it gives me a black screen or just shows the first frame and i can only hear the sound but not see the video.

i tried viewing a video file from another camera (Fujifilm Finepix) and same thing. this problem occurred under 10.4.8 and still happens under 10.4.9. any ideas? thanks.
     
fongyuen  (op)
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Oct 2006
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Mar 16, 2007, 11:59 PM
 
i forgot to mention that these videos play fine in windows when i'm in boot camp and parallels. any ideas??
     
JKT
Professional Poster
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: London, UK
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Mar 17, 2007, 07:38 AM
 
It could be the format that the videos are recording in doesn't have a codec available in OS X. What happens if you switch from QVGA to VGA for recording movies on your camera?
     
fongyuen  (op)
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Oct 2006
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Mar 22, 2007, 10:53 AM
 
here's a short clip i took with the Fujifilm camera at work. won't play in osx with vlc or qt. but plays fine in wmp in bootcamp/coherence mode.

http://amd.streamload.com/fongyuen/Hosted/DSCF2018.AVI

here's a screen shot of the two side by side. anyone else getting a black screen while playing this file?

     
fongyuen  (op)
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Oct 2006
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Mar 28, 2007, 08:27 AM
 
alright, i guess not too many people having this problem but it's finally solved, after i installed the perian plugin, i can now view the videos in quicktime. still doesn't work right in vlc, but at least in qt it does.
     
red rocket
Mac Elite
Join Date: Mar 2002
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Mar 28, 2007, 09:35 AM
 
To add to the mystery, your video plays just fine under OS 10.3.9 and QuickTime 6.5.2.
     
JKT
Professional Poster
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: London, UK
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Mar 28, 2007, 02:01 PM
 
Also plays without any issues for me in VLC, MPlayer, RealPlayer and Quicktime in 10.4.9, without the QT perian codec installed (I do have the DivX component installed though, which could be how it plays in QT without any problems).
     
steegg
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: May 2007
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
May 2, 2007, 05:12 AM
 
Ok, in the last two or three weeks I've been having exactly the same problems with iPhoto and my FujiFilm S5500 camera. Possibly it was since I installed Mac OS X 10.4.9, I'm not sure. But now I think I have found the solution. And the key came when I went to the web site: Perian - The swiss-army knife of QuickTime� components
(( My installation is a iMac PowerPC G5 with Mac OS X 10.4.9 & QuickTime 7.1.5 ))

where is says: Installation Tip: Please consider removing obsolete QuickTime Components.

So I trashed the whole of the directory /System/Library/QuickTime which contained the following files:

QuickTimeComponents.component 28 March 2005
QuickTime3GPP.component 28 March 2005
QuickTime Updater.app 28 March 2005
QuartzComposer.component 21 March 2005
QuickTimeVR.component 28 March 2005
QuickTimeUSBVDCDigitizer.component 21 March 2005
QuickTimeStreaming.component 28 March 2005
QuickTimeMPEG4.component 28 March 2005
QuickTimeMPEG.component 28 March 2005
QuickTimeIIDCDigitizer.component 28 March 2005
QuickTimeH264.component 28 March 2005
QuickTimeFireWireDV.component 28 March 2005
AviImporter-r7 (ppc).component 25 March 2006
XviD_Codec-r58 (ppc).component 25 March 2006

When I had done this, not surprisingly QuickTime told me is couldn't open files.

Then I installed the latest version of QuickTime 7.1.6
which put the following components in the system directory : /System/Library/QuickTime

QuickTimeComponents.component 28 April 2007
QuickTimeH264.component 28 April 2007
QuickTimeIIDCDigitizer.component 28 April 2007
QuickTime3GPP.component 28 April 2007
QuickTimeMPEG.component 28 April 2007
QuickTimeFireWireDV.component 28 April 2007
QuickTimeStreaming.component 28 April 2007
QuickTimeMPEG4.component 28 April 2007
ApplePixletVideo.component 21 March 2005
QuickTimeVR.component 28 April 2007
QuickTime Updater.app today

Now it plays the videos from my digital camera.

To play other videos I then needed to I rescued the following components from the trash and put them back in : /System/Library/QuickTime

AviImporter-r7 (ppc).component 25 March 2006
XviD_Codec-r58 (ppc).component 25 March 2006

Now it all works again and I can watch videos from my digital camera and videos downloaded from Azureus, and I didn't need to install Perian.
Hopefully this technique will be of help to someone.
     
msuper69
Professional Poster
Join Date: Jan 2000
Location: Columbus, OH
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
May 2, 2007, 07:53 AM
 
Plays perfectly on my BlackBook w/10.4.9 via Flip4Mac.
     
TETENAL
Addicted to MacNN
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: FFM
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
May 2, 2007, 08:32 AM
 
Originally Posted by steegg View Post
Installation Tip: Please consider removing obsolete QuickTime Components.

So I trashed the whole of the directory /System/Library/QuickTime which contained the following files […]
Never touch the /System folder. This folder is Apple's domain and messing with it will pretty much guarantee that you damage the system.

When the Perian instructions suggest to "remove obsolete plug-ins" they mean third-party plug-ins that live in /Library/QuickTime or ~/Library/QuickTime. And the web-site specifically lists which other third-party codecs are obsoleted by Perian and which not.
     
mduell
Posting Junkie
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Houston, TX
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
May 2, 2007, 09:56 AM
 
FYI the Canon digital cameras use MJPEG for video.
     
   
Thread Tools
 
Forum Links
Forum Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Top
Privacy Policy
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 05:41 PM.
All contents of these forums © 1995-2017 MacNN. All rights reserved.
Branding + Design: www.gesamtbild.com
vBulletin v.3.8.8 © 2000-2017, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.,