I have many hours of old iMovies (made from 8mm and Digital tapes), iDVD, FCP and others apps. I just read this article: “Apple is killing QuickTime 7 in macOS 10.15: convert old media now” by Eclectic Light Company 3/23/2019, and it advises to “convert old media now”.
I have an old Sony Digital8 player (FireWire output) and an iMac (27″, late 2013) running Mojave. I have iMove 10.1.11 and FCP 10.4.6. Due to hard drive malfunctions in the past, i’ve lost many of the files that were converted, so, i have to start over on most of the material.
Any and all recommendations would be greatly appreciated on the specifics on how to get this done. For example, there are many video start stops on a single D8 cassette: Do i run iMove/FCP and “let it run” to end up with the many individual files?
However, some files do exist. How would those be handled?
If not completly answerable here in the Forum, maybe the focus of a future macmost video? Thank you so much for all you do!
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Rick Apodaca
Can you open the files you have now in QuickTime Player or the old QuickTime 7 app and just export them into a standard format? Not sure how many you are dealing with.
You could just get an app that has a batch file processing ability. On the free side there is Handbrake. But I would use Apple's own Compressor app. Then just convert all of your video, archive the old files to some external media after.
I find it hard to believe that there will be no way to open or view those old videos in the next version of macOS. I could see with QuickTime 7 going away that iMovie and FCP won't be able to open them. But perhaps Handbrake and VLC will continue to work. Not sure if the are relying on QuickTime 7's support files to read those video formats or if they are doing it on their own.
What format would QT7 export to for using iMovie/FCP? I tried .mov and that did not work in iMovie. Even tried VLC with no luck. Thanks for any help.
Robert: .mov is a container, not a format. A .mov file could contain all sorts of formats. What settings were you using in the export? Try h264 with relatively standard settings. Or, try opening the original in QuickTime Player (not 7) and export from that as it only allows you to export in pretty normal settings.