unix executable compatibility problem on Mac OS X 10.4
 

I have over 200 gbs of home video files I've archived on my computer. They're invaluable to me. I am in the process of trying to compress them and upload some of them to youtube. However, I examined some of the mpeg-4 files while booting in Ubuntu 7.04 unix and viewed them in ubuntu's Totem movie-player. Ever since I did that, I can only view the files in totem! All my video tweaking software is on my mac os. I've tried apending .avi. mpg, .mov, etc. different file endings to the files with no avail. The icon of all the movie files just shows up as a black "terminal-like" image with green letters "exec" with the extension "Unix Executable File". Please help!

Resolving this (reading and working with the video files in Mac OS is extremely important to me!)

Thanks.

So, is the issue that you cannot open them in any OS X editing app, or that the icons show up incorrectly and you cannot double click them?

Open a Terminal.app window
type "file "
drag each file that you are having trouble with into the Terminal window
press enter

The list will tell you the filetype of each file. You should be able to use this to determine a proper extension. If any come up as "data" you might be stuck.

Also, the files might have "exec" icons because they have executable permissions. They are movies so you should be able to do the following to remove those permissions.

Open a Terminal.app window
type "chmod -x "
drag each file into the window
press enter

You might have to refresh the Finder (close and reopen the window, kill the Finder, or Log out and back in) to see the updated files.

And of course:
Be careful in the Terminal

Then the very first step is to back up all of this and place the backup media inside a small fire safe, lock it and put the key some place you will not loose it. Better if you make two copies and take one some place and leave it there. You did say "invaluable" so I am wondering why this was not done already. What about the tapes? Don't you have the tape you shot? You should be able to re-load those.

OK that done? You have a backup locked away. No chance of a typo messing up you files? Now we can get on with some other ideas. Using the "file" command is the first thing. Figure out what you've got Post results here.

okay, thanks for the awesome, helpful feedback.

The results of the "file" maneuver:
in short, "cannot execute binary file" was the result.

I got the same error for the chmod suggestion.

yeah, thanks for the great advice on backing up the data. Already done that. The tapes are 8mm. Too me about 90 hours to get them all digital. Everything's backed on a 250 gb hd, but I'm still working with this "unix executable" "binary file" problem. As of yet, no mac os x applications will read the files. Changing file type (appending .mov, .mpg, .avi, etc.) and dragging onto Quicktime, for example, just produces the succinct and unhelpful error:
The "binary file" output of the "file" command is a new bit of information, but I still need to determine how to work with that!

The "file" command and chmod command resulted in "cannot read binary file".

You did it incorrectly. the "file" command should be followed by the path to th file you want to test attributes.

Right, okay, I did it correctly this time and got:
"DIF (DV) movie file (NTSC)"
The chmod -x trick has no effect.

Give it the file suffix of .mov

And if you open Quicktime player, select Open File from the File pull-down menu, and surf to the file and then select it, does it open? It should.

Yeah, hey yellow, thanks for offering suggestions, but I think I already posted my results to this. Opening it from within Quicktime results in the error "This file could not be opened. This is not a movie file."

I'm not sure if QuickTime Player can open that kind of file.
Had you been opening these files before in QuickTime Player?

Read the root problem. I've never been able to open this type (apparently the DV type) file in mac os x 10.4 in ANY program (VLC, quicktime, etc.) included. I'd be extremely grateful if anyone new how to solve this -- how to get those video files to be readable by any mac os x program.

What format were the files originally? Where did they come from? (What media source, what apps were used to get them onto your disk?)
Were you able to open these files before?

It seems unlikely that the "Totem" program would change the content (e.g. format) of the files but that is possible.
Maybe try again using "Totem" on a sample file that you can open with some app on your Mac. Run the 'file' command on the sample file before and after you use "Totem".

okay, they "Originally" came from a dv camcorder, but after loading them onto my mac, way back, they were recognized as .mpg files. I could interchangeably alter their type to .mov, too . The point is that mac move software read them. Ever since I viewed them in Ubuntu linux 7.04, that OS seemed to "stamp them" or something with this binary bs and now only linux recognizes (can even open and play) the files and they seem useless on mac. They're each about 1.9 gb.

Yes it does seem unlikey that Totem would change content, but not unlikely that the linux OS would. I had to copy the files to a LInux formatted HD, so lots of permissions, file type, etc. alterations could have been made unbeknownst to me (damn linux!:D I love macs!).
This is incredibly unclear. Use Totem rebooted in Linux? I can't open ANY of the files with ANY mac program. They, as of yet, can only be opened on linux. Run the "file" routine in Linux? What are you talking about?

Ahh - this tells me that you need to explain in detail exactly what you did with these files in terms of copying them back & forth.
I'd been assuming that you had these files on your Mac's drive or some external drive attached to your Mac and then you (without any copying) accessed them from Linux (e.g. over the network).
So please tell us in detail what the history of these files was. And which disk are the files on now?

I meant to start with a new file off of the DV camcorder. First make a copy (duplicate) of that file. Then do exactly what you had done previously - bring it onto the Mac, check that you can open it with Mac software, etc. Then run the 'file' command on it on the Mac. Then go over to Linux and open the file with Totem. Then bring the file back to the Mac and run 'file' on it again.

If they are DV files you can use DropDV in order to change them into .mpeg files. Or .mov files if I recall.

[QUOTE]And I did just that. That's all I did. I copied the files from a FAT 32 formatted external 500 gb HD to a linux-formatted hd, and viewed some of them in Totem. Then ALL of them converted to this warped binary file.

It sounds like your first assumption was accurate. I'll spell this out even more clearly.
Where are the dozens of 1.9 gb binary (previously .mov) files? On my Macbook mac-formatted HD AND backedup on a FAT32-formatted external HD. No files currently reside on any linux-formatted hds.

Again, It's a very simple situation with a seemingly unsolveable solution; don't blame the description of the problem, when no one seems to be able to solve it. Asking me to repeat the simple situation over again and misconstruing it to falsely believe that this seems unsolveable because of a poor description of the scenario is absurd.

I appreciate this suggestion, however, dropdv didn't work. I'm thinking, I wonder if there's a way to use the compatibility with linux to get them to be read by mac os. like save them in some certain way in linux avoiding this mac incompatibility.

No need to get defensive about this. For whatever reason, I (and probably others) have not yet understood what your situation is. I.e. I still don't understand exactly what you did, and hence it is hard to find a solution since I don't completely understand the problem.

You said that you copied the files to a Linux-formatted hard drive and then viewed "them" (presumably the copies, not the originals) using Totem under Linux. And after that the files appeared to have a problem. But if you were only acting on the copies of the files on that Linux hard drive, how could the originals be affected? I must be missing something.

I.e. from what you have said so far, it sounds like you copied the files to your Linux drive, then did something on Linux, then came back to your Mac and found out that the files on the Mac were somehow affected by what you did on Linux - even though presumably the Mac's drive was not connected at all to the Linux machine.

Please try again to explain, in much more detail.

Perhaps they've become entangled.:cool:

Yeah, you're right. sorry mate. Just a bit (immensely) stressed with this at this point. But again, I REALLY appreciate the input and advice.

I viewed them fine from the external hd in linux (ubuntu live cd) in Totem. Then whenever I view them now from windows or mac OS they're unreadable.

I never copied all the files from the external hd I viewed them in linux directly off the external hd (in totem) and that warped them or changed all the final formats. But I did not copy all the files from the external hd onto linux and then back onto the external (FAT32 formatted) external hd. When linux loaded them into totem, it warped something with the files.

This is a peculiar incident, so, again, you're right I should have been more clear and I genuinely respect your patience immensely.

I'll just run through it again.
1. I view many 1.9 gb .mov files (home videos) in linux and copy maybe 3 or 4 of them onto the linux formatted HD. I view most of them in totem while they're still on the external hd.
2. I change around my oses, reformat and got rid of the linux formatted HD. I only run linux off the live cd, currently.
3. Whenever I view all the files from the external hd in Mac OS or Windows (I need to view them in mac, where all the movie editting software is, though) they appear as that wierd executable file .exec binary file.

I can only deduce that linux changed/warped something with those original files. One thing I could do is reopen them in linux somehow and try to save them specifically as some kind of mac file of sort, but then it still might warp the files.

HAHAH! LOL!! :D :eek:Yes, Quantum Entanglement, right on p65. Much needed comic relief. that's basically what happened! The two file formates (linux and mac) are spatially seperate, but they became quantumly tangled up with each, resulting in this anti-matter existence of a Macinux file format previously a movie! haha.
I love that Dr. who quantum stuff. great refernce.:D

You still aren't being quite precise or detailed enough in your description of the situation.
What I have now understood is as follows:

- you have some video files (each one of size 1.9 GB) on an external hard drive
- you successfully looked at some of these files on the external disk using Totem on a Linux machine
- you currently cannot open these files using any video editing app on your Mac

But you haven't told us:
- how this external hard drive is (or was) attached to your Mac, Windows, and Linux machines (but I'm guessing it is via USB - or was it attached to one of these machines and then shared over the network?)

In addition to the above uncertainties, one thing is extremely unclear. You had previously said:
So you have two copies of these files?
And both copies exhibit the problem?
Both the files on the external disk that you looked while (as I presume) it was attached to a Linux machine, and the files that are on your Mac's internal hard drive?

Not sure if this will help, but anything could paint the picture of my dilemma better at this point. Here's just a simple snapshot of the folder of the files with the Info displayed in Mac OS X 10.4
http://016bc85.netsolhost.com/tmp_sup/warpedfiles.png

In terminal, enter ls -l (that's "LS -L" but in lower case) to list the files with more information showing (ie ownership and permissions)... you should get results that look like this...
Copy a few lines of the output here for us to see.

I'm guessing your files will show permissions like rwxrwxrwx. Finder will show files with executable permissions with the icon your desktop shows. It's possible the ownership is also changed on these files so your chmod command couldn't effect them.

Copy one or two over to your mac and then try the chmod command from earlier... I just remembered that I couldn't chmod or chown anything on my fat32 drive so getting them off that drive might allow you to change the settings.

ok gotta go sleep...good luck

Pictures are always good.
But what would be better is if you would answer my (implicit) questions from my previous post in this thread.
I.e. please explain which of the two copies of these files you are talking about.
And if the files that are giving you trouble are the ones on the external hard drive, then please explain why you don't just use the originals that are on your Mac's internal hard drive.

hey p6s, really appreciate the response. Thanks. I'm not near my mac right now, but will respond with that terminal code excerpt and report after fiddling with the chmod commands ASAP.

they're one and the same, mate. I'm not a moron. If the external hd worked, I'd just use that. Neither source works as of now. Same results (the .exec files) on internal or external hd. That should be pretty frickin' obvious by now.

You need to slow down a bit in your responses and realize that there must be some reason why what seems obvious to you isn't obvious to me.

I ask again for a precise and detailed explanation of what you did and which copy of the files you did it to.
It isn't at all obvious that you did anything at all to the files that are on your Mac's internal disk. You said that you accessed the files that were on your external disk with that program on Linux and that after that you had a problem.
But as far as I have understood so far (from what you have said), you never accessed the files that are on your Mac's internal disk with that program on Linux. And hence it cannot be that Linux program which has changed them.

So if they are changed from what they were before (when you could access them with some OS X program) then it must have been something else that changed them.

Because FAT32 does not support Unix-style permissions, Linux will mount such partitions as 777 (rwxrwxrwx) by default. Perhaps the Mac is now doing the same thing where before it was not. Copying files off the external drive onto the internal drive would retain these same permissions.

It is unlikely in the extreme that the files themselves have been modified in any way. If nothing else, you'd have noticed the harddrive activity while modifying 100+ 2GB files.

It is also possible that you have lost the creator/type metadata that OS X uses when there's no extension (or in preference to the extension). I would try renaming them to have a .dv extension, as the file command shows they are DV files, and not quicktime (.mov) or mpegs (.mpg or .mpeg).

Here's the code:

What's interesting and could easily be a factor of the problem is the group and owner is john_koo, but my userid is john kooz, or Actually that's probably just truncated.

YEEEESSS!! Brilliant deduction ash. appending .dv totally worked. You're right. You understood the problem perfectly. The actual files were not alterred and now even quicktime recognizes and can read and play the file with the .dv suffix. THANKS A TON!!!!!!!! That said, and gratitude expressed, how did this happen again? DV files are like the generic camera file format? How did they transfer from .mov to .dv? How can I prevent that? I've never even heard of .dv before directly. Well, those are supplementary questions, the main problem is solved. thank god it's just an extension alteration!

That said, more importantly, anyone know a good method to compress a 1.9 gb movie file into under 100mb? The length of the actual movie file does not need to change (in other words, I don't need to actually splice the footage).

We might have a chance of answering these questions if you told us exactly what you had done to these files (the ones on your internal Mac drive).
It seems likely that the files didn't have an extension, but were previously being identified as being DV files via one of the other mechanisms (e.g. resource forks).

Since this is a different (and unrelated) question from the topic of this thread, please start a new thread about it. It sounds like it would belong in the Applications section of the forums.

You missed it! We already solved that!

Good call. Thanks. yeah, you're right. This problem is solved.