iTunes : Movie file cannot be found error message

  • Last Modified: August 27, 2008
  • Article: TS2191
  • Old Article: 301691

Symptoms

When playing movies in iTunes 4.8 or later, you may see the following message:

"The movie file file name cannot be found. Without this file the movie cannot play properly."

This message occurs if you have reference movies in your iTunes library that can no longer access the original media. A reference movie is a very small file that points QuickTime to another location where a copy of the movie resides. These files are often temporary movie files created by another application.

Products Affected

iTunes 7 for Windows, iTunes 7 for Mac OS X

Resolution

To resolve this issue:

  1. Open iTunes.
  2. Click Library in the Source list.
  3. From the Edit menu, choose View Options.
  4. In the resulting dialog, select the Kind checkbox.


     
  5. Click OK.
  6. Select Library in the Source list.
  7. Click the Kind column header (you may need to scroll to the right to see it).
  8. Scroll down to find all QuickTime movie files in your iTunes library (look for "QuickTime Movie" in the Kind column).


     
  9. Double-click the first QuickTime movie file to open it.
  10. If the file plays, move on to the next file. If the error occurs, click Cancel and then choose Clear from the Edit menu to remove the file from your library.
  11. Repeat steps 8 and 9 for all QuickTime movie files in your library.
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