Movie file randomly went missing - cannot play movie

Question

One of my movies just randomly stopped working. when I click to play it, I get the message that says "The movie could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" It then gives the option to locate or cancel. this happened AFTER updating to 9.1. Anyone have a solution

Answer 1

We can play a .mov file (a full-length film created in final cut pro) but cannot actually open it in QuickTime. We get the error message saying that a file is missing, and the movie can't play properly without the file. The thing is, we can play the film, we just can't open it to move it to another drive. Help?
Sounds like you created a "Reference" file here. I.e., a "Reference" file is a file that tells the player how to play the data contained in a "Resource" file. When you try to open the "Reference" file in the QT Player app, the first thing the player does is check to see if the "Resource" data file is is still available where it is supposed to be. (I.e., moving/deleting the resource file or moving reference file without moving the resource file to maintain the relative path between the two will generate the error message you mentioned.)
Also, can the lost file (which was deleted) be recovered from a Mac HD or an external hard drive?
That depends. Deleting a file does not actually erase the data immediately. Instead, the operating system just tells the system directory that the space containing the movie data is available for reuse if/when needed. As time passes, the chance that some of the data sectors will be re-written by other data continuously increases. To restore the file normally requires use of a special utility that both locates and restores all of the linked sectors containing the "deleted" movie data in their correct order. Other methods of restoring files would depend on the software you routinely have active on your system. For instance, do you use "TimeMachine?" or orther software that automatically backs up your data periodically? If so, then follow the instructions for your particular application to recover a deleted file.