Home Forums Peripherals & Multimedia Audio, Video, Photography Old movies play back single frame

I have a number of older videos (7 or 8 years) that won't open except to show a single frame....in QuickTime 7. However the Get Info indicates more content, if size is an indicator. For example 900KB, 1.2 MB et cetera.

I downloaded an app called VLC and it looked hopeful, but nada. With VLC the movies seem to want to open. There's a lot of "vibrating" of the single image which lasts 10 seconds.

They are .MOV files.

Any thoughts?

Do you have Handbrake? You could try converting the .mov files to something that VLC might like better, like .m4p, and see if that helps.

However, QuickTime 7 shouldn't have a problem with a .mov file. Will they play in QuickTime Player 10.5? (I don't know which OS you're using.)

No, but I will get it and give your .m4p suggestion a try. Thanks


I’m Quicktime 7 and that’s as good as it can get, now that QT is discontinued. I’m Mojave 10.14.6

In Mojave 10.14.6 you should have QuickTime Player 10.5.

So I do....it's in the Applications folder. Thanks. I thought I didn't have it because it wasn't listed in the option to "Open With". However, still no joy. I used it to open a 1.2MB .MOV file and just got a 1 second playback of the first frame.

Is there any chance these movies are Digital Rights Protected? What was their original source?

No digital rights issues here. They are all "home movie" material shot either with an iPhone, a GoPro, or with material shot on a Sony camera (analog) converted to digital. I don't see any consistency as in "only the iPhone material" or "only the GoPro material" et cetera.

Have you tried opening them in iMovie? the might yield a clue as to what is going on.

I gave iMovie a try but it just made things more mysterious. When using "Import Movie" it shows some files as greyed-out and others as apparently openable. However, iMovie won't open all files that would seem to be okay. Instead some open and some have a -37 error. Quicktime, on the other hand, will open every file with an icon that appears to say okay.

At this point I think I should try the various pieces of software (VLC, Handbrake, et cetera) and track the differences. Maybe a more comprehensive list of results will be more helpful.

ERROR -37

Ten or twelve years ago the assumption would be there was a file or folder name somewhere in the file pathname longer the 31 characters but that limit has long since gone away. However you might try renaming the files getting the -37 error on the suspicion there is something wonky (hidden characters etc. embedded somewhere in there.

How and on what kind of media have these files been stored and for how long and it what conditions? It is starting to sound as if the files may have become damaged. It only takes a few bits to decay, fade, or flip in the wrong place to make a file unusable and magnetic media has a finite lifespan. SD cards and thumb drives have an even shorter memory lifetime.

VLC Player will also repair damaged videos but there are some things you must do when importing the files

There are also dedicate video repair apps such as Video Doctor, WonderShare.