Well that was an interesting, but ultimately fruitless investigation.
One of our librarians at work had a video file in .MOV format they could not open. I tried the usual suspects (VLC, Handbrake, ffmpeg, etc) before trying various esoteric codecs, all to no avail.
Figuring it might have needed older codecs, I fired up first the 2010 MacBook Air running 10.12.6 I had lying around.
No luck there.
Then I went for the oldest working Mac I have - a Powerbook G4, of probably 2005 vintage. Alas, it too didn't recognise the format. Finally I dug up a copy of Final Cut Express (v4), but that was another dead end.
We're left hoping the accession records might have a few more clues (of course, it's also possible the file is corrupt).
Well dear readers, we have closure on the mystery Quicktime file.
It turns out, one of our sysadmins had a copy of the original files stashed on a server in a very logical place for the last 11 years, and so we can now properly archive that and export useable file formats from it.
Be this a lesson to all hoarders, you’re doing ok.
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