Recover old (2008-2013) MOV and MPG files

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Level 1

10 points

Recover old (2008-2013) MOV and MPG files

I can no longer open the old mov and mpg files on my external drives. I get the message ‘The file is not compatible with QuickTime Player’ and sometimes also the message that the file may be damaged. I have tried to convert the files in “VLC” and in ‘Final Video Player’ (paid), but unfortunately without success. Both also give the above messages.

The files were exported from my old Mac from 2008 to two external hard drives and were mostly last edited in December 2012. Unfortunately, I no longer have my old Mac, so I can no longer use the ‘QuickTime player’ from 2008.

I have a TimeMachine on my external hard drive from my current Mac from 20 March 2021.

I was able to open a few files on my current Mac (Ventura 13.7.8) in 2019 and use them in my home videos.

The videos are from the early years of my grandchildren's lives.

Who can help me open these files again?

iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 13.7

Posted on Sep 3, 2025 5:19 AM

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Answer 1

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Tlly Author

Level 1

10 points

Sep 3, 2025 5:35 PM in response to Tlly

First of all, thank you very much for your responses!

I continued searching and found a way to convert and to open the files. The files were not damaged and were completely intact.

My actions:

- I connected my external hard drive with the files to my husband's Windows PC.

- I installed Quicktime 7 on his PC.

- The videos were played with QuickTime 7 and with both image and sound.

- VLC converted the files to mp4 (mov and m4v did not work) and I could play now the new files on the PC, also again with image and sound.

- Back to my MAC:

- The MP4 file could be opened with QuickTime, but there was no sound!

- Using Final Video Player, I converted the MP4 files to mov and, to be on the safe side, also to m4v.

- I was then able to play the videos with QuickTime without any problems and with image and sound.

Now I have to get started with the rest of my not working files. So I have still a long way to go, but I'm going to get there!

And I can also start to make an homevideo with the converted beautiful videos in FCPX.

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Answer 2

MartinR

Level 7

24,053 points

Sep 3, 2025 7:08 AM in response to Tlly

They were probably done using a codec that is no longer available in QT or contemporary players.

If you can, select one of the MOV or MPG files and do Get Info (CMD-I) and tell us what codec is listed for the file. With that information someone here may be able to help.

Do you recall what app(s) you used when you created the movies?

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Answer 3

Sep 3, 2025 6:03 AM in response to Tlly

I would also try other video players, like Elmedia Player or MPlayerX. They often handle older formats better. You could also try converting the files with HandBrake — it's free and may help convert the videos to a modern format. If the files are corrupted, there are recovery tools like Stellar Repair for Video. Another idea is to check if you can restore old versions of the files or QuickTime settings from Time Machine.

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Answer 4

Sep 3, 2025 11:19 AM in response to Tlly

FWIW I have similar old "Motion JPEG OpenDML" .avi movies which Sequoia QuickTime Player can play. But if I change the suffix to .mov, then QT Player insists that it is incompatible while IINA and VLC have no trouble with it.

So does changing the extension to .avi help with your movie?

I converted all such movies with obsolete codecs while I was still using Mojave with MPEG Streamclip to H.264 video and PCM audio to AAC wrapped as .mp4 or .mov. ...of course I then archived the old .avi movies because you never know when you want to revert to the originals...

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Answer 5

HWTech

Level 9

68,228 points

Sep 3, 2025 9:24 AM in response to Tlly

Have you tried copying the files to your internal boot drive before trying to view them or convert them?

macOS can sometimes be very picky about the file system on external drives and certain things may not work properly when a non-Apple file system is involved.

It is also possible those files were already damaged on your old Mac & you are only discovering it now. Or maybe the files were damaged during the transfer to the external drive. Or maybe that external drive has a hardware failure causing some of the files to become damaged. Unless you verified each video worked fine on the source & the external, and even verified they were byte for byte compatible (usually using a hash checksum of some sort is sufficient), then you cannot know when or how they become damaged.

Retaining data for decades without corruption is very tricky. The more important the data, then the more copies of that data is needed for safe guarding it.

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Answer 6

Sep 3, 2025 5:58 AM in response to Tlly

A sample movie in some cloud service like Dropbox might provide more info.

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Answer 7

MartinR

Level 7

24,053 points

Sep 3, 2025 10:18 AM in response to Tlly

Tlly wrote

Codecs: Linear PCM, Motion JPEG A

Motion JPEG is a legacy video codec, AFAIK it no longer supported in QuickTime 10. It "should" play in the older QT 7 but you would need OS X Snow Leopard for that.

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Answer 8

MartinR

Level 7

24,053 points

Sep 3, 2025 10:27 AM in response to Tlly

Tlly wrote:

SOORT: MPEG-film

I could not find any references to "MPEG-film" but based on the file extension ".MPG" my guess is that it's an MPEG-2 video, which cannot be played in QuickTime. It's also extremely small (76 Kb) which makes me doubt there's actually any video in it.

MPEG-2 is typically the format of DVD videos. Handbrake should support this.

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Answer 9

Tlly Author

Level 1

10 points

Sep 3, 2025 7:16 AM in response to Blaskowitz

Stellar Repair for Video indicates that there is damage and Handbrake cannot convert the files. Both are installed free of charge and I have made several attempts with them.

There are still iMacs from 2009 available for purchase. Would it be possible for me to open the files with a Mac from 2009 running for example, the Snow Leopard 2009, Lion 2011, Mountain Lion 2012 or Mavericks operating systems? If so, I would consider purchasing one.

I am still wondering why I was able to open videos with my current Mac in 2019, which I find strange.

At the time, I have exported all files from my old Mac (2009) to my external drive and I always control exportfiles on mine harddisk. So where did the damage come from? I nearly did'n use them.

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