QuickTime Player Won’t Play MOV Files, Solved!

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Quicktime player just won’t play .mov files, WHY?????

I have a problem with this new Maverick system! In Quicktime, videos will not play and this is my job. all editing has ceased and I just upgraded the laptop to Maverick as well. How can I play these videos? Why am I not able to open? It was working 2 days ago now nothing! I keep getting this message! Is there any way to switch back to Lion? I’m losing out! Should I switch to Windows 8? What is going on Apple?

Why QuickTime Won’t Play MOV Files?

As Apple’s proprietary media player, QuickTime is distributed in free basic versions for Mac and Windows systems. Apple developed MOV as a digital video format that works natively with QuickTime. Although an MOV file may be compatible with QuickTime, it may still fail to load in the QuickTime player for the following various reasons:

Software Update

If QuickTime fails to play your MOV file, then it is possible that your application is obsolete and no longer supported. The media player may not be able to read the digital video because the technology that was used to encode it was recently developed. When in that condition, make sure to update your QuickTime player to the newest version.

Filename Accuracy

A file extension reveals what type of data is contained in a file, it also indicates which type of software should open the file. But since file extensions can be easily edited, they may not always be accurately assigned to files. As a result, your MOV file may not load in QuickTime because it has been misidentified as a digital video that is compatible with the application. But free tools like MediaInfo and FileAlyzer can analyze a problematic file’s properties and confirm if it is using the right file extension. Some free tools like MediaInfo and FileAlyzer can analyze a problematic file’s properties and confirm if it is using the right file extension.

Media Encoding

If your MOV file fails to load in other media players besides QuickTime (e.g. iTunes, VLC, GOM Player, Zoom Player), then the asset is probably corrupt. Since the digital video was not properly encoded in the first place, it cannot be read by QuickTime ( or any other supported application) even it is a compatible format.

Codec Support

Digital videos like MOV files are all products of compression. During compression, multiple streams of audio and video tracks are written with a special algorithm called a codec. If your MOV file fails to load in QuickTime, then it is possible that your system is not equipped to read the digital video’s codecs.

If QuickTime player MOV files playing back issue is caused due to unsupported codec issue, you can either use QuickTime’s open architecture, third-party developers to create components or plug-in to QuickTime. If you are looking for a simple way to fix this issue, you can download a third-party video conversion application such as Pavtube Video Converter for Mac (Top 5 Mac Video Converter Review) to easily encode MOV files with incompatible codec to QuickTime player compatible H.264 mov format. Besides converting MOV to QuickTime, the program also helps converting MOV files to iTunes supported file formats for syncing to iPhone 5SE, iPad Pro 2, iPad Mini 4, Apple TV 4, etc

For Windows users, you can get the job easily completed by downloading Pavtube Video Converter.

Free trial for Mac version

Free trial for Windows version

How to Transcode MOV to QuickTime Supported Format?

Step 1: Load unsupported mov files into the program.
Install and launch the application on your computer, click “File” > “Add Video/Audio” or “Add from folder” button to load QuickTime MOV files into the program.

Step 2: Select QuickTime supported file format.
Click the “Format” drop-down button to select QuickTime player best supported “MOV QuickTime Video (*.mov)” from the “Common Video” category.

Step 3: Start MOV to QuickTime conversion process.
Press the right-bottom “Convert” button to begin to convert MOV to QuickTime playable format video.
When the conversion is completed, you will have no problems to play MOV files on QuickTime player.

When the conversion is completed, click “Open Output Folder” to pop out the folder with converted files.