Video files on my external HD won't play on my iMac

I recently backed up my iPhoto library onto an external drive due to space issues on my desktop iMac. I did this through the export option in iPhoto. All of the photos have transferred beautifully, however the video files are no longer playing. They have become .MOV files and open through Quicktime. The screen is black and the audio has disappeared, however they still appear to be the length that they are supposed to be (i.e. the duration time of each file is displayed properly). When I try to open them in iPhoto, it simply tells me that file type is unsupported, which leads me to hope that they just need to be converted before being played.
I have checked the forums and the only information I can stumble across is from 2011 and makes me think that the files are lost and irrecoverable.
Someone please help and tell me that I can still watch my videos. They are personal videos from the last 10+ years of my life, so I would be devastated if they are gone.
Thanks!

Get a second external drive, drag both the iTunes library and the pictures to it, launch iTunes with the Option key held down, and point it to that instance of the library. This also works with iPhoto, but see below.
A drive or partition needs to be formatted as Mac OS Extended in order to hold an iPhoto library or for Time Machine to back it up.
(83755)

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http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-set-up-an-external-hard-drive-for-use-with-os-x/
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