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Old videos trapped in Photos

I have a number of older videos from 2012 or so, most of which were taken with an iPhone 4 or 4s, that seem to be stuck in Photos.


When I try to open the videos in Photos, no player controls pop up. The videos are .MOV files, and say they are H.264. There is an alert symbol in the corner of the image. Clicking on that alert symbol brings a pop-up saying these are in an unsupported video format.


So, I decided to try to open them with something else. Choosing "Edit with ... Quicktime" brings up an error message that says: "An error occurred while preparing external edit. [File name] couldn't be copied because you don't have permission to access [file name]. You don't have permission." Same message for any other program I try.


Trying to export to my desktop brings a window that says "Export complete with errors. The export operation failed to create a file for the photo identified below." For errors, it says "Unknown error (2)."


Trying to export the unmodified original gives a slightly different error: "[File name] couldn't be copied because you don't have permission to access "Desktop."


Yes, I have checked, and this account does have read/write access for the desktop. Rebooting also did nothing to change the results.


I understand if Photos won't play these videos because of an unsupported format, but it is incredibly frustrating that the videos seem to be stuck in Photos with no way to get them out to try a different program. Any ideas?


FYI 2017 iMac, running Big Sur (11.6).



iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Oct 25, 2021 9:19 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 26, 2021 1:12 AM

Hi


Where is your library stored? In your pictures folder? Or somewhere else. If on an external drive, what is the format (It needs to be APFS or MacOS extended with the "ignore ownership" checkbox checked.


If on the internal drive, or on an external correctly formatted drive, try a library repair.

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3 replies

Oct 26, 2021 1:32 PM in response to TonyCollinet

Thanks so much for the reply.


To answer your question, the library was stored in the Pictures folder on the internal (Fusion) drive formatted as APFS.


But, repairing the library seems to have fixed everything. Not only am I now able to export the videos, they seem to play fine in Photos again. I did not try that before because I mistakenly assumed that, regardless of whatever errors had cropped up in the library and perhaps might be preventing me from playing the videos, I should at least be able to export the originals. Obviously I was wrong.


Thanks again.

Old videos trapped in Photos

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