Transferring Files from my Mac to a Hard drive

Hey guys!
So I have some videos on my hard drive for my mac that I am trying to move to an external hard drive. The movies are both AVI and MPEG 4 files. I play the AVI Files using a VLC player and I pplay the MPEG 4 files using quicktime. When I try moving them over to my hard drive, I get an error message saying that they cannot be copied over because they cannot be read. Can someone advise me on how to proceed? Thanks!

I get an error message saying that they cannot be copied over because they cannot be read.
Please post the exact, complete text of that error message, or a screenshot.

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