topic Re: hidden videos on macos in Camera Software

EOS Utility hidden videos on macOS

hpaco — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 13:42:51 GMT

Hello,

I have been breaking my head since last wekeend as EOS Utility is not working properly on Ventura MACOS, But all begun because my videos were "missing" on my external disk where I download images/videos from my camera.

Turns out videos are being downloaded but they are stored as "hidden files" on my external disk, I have to press a few keys each time I want to "reveal" those files. Only videos are hidden, JPEG and RAW photos show normally.

Does someone know why is this happening and how can it be solved?

Google shows me completely unrelated info when searching for hidden files on macos.

Help would be greatly apreciated.

Re: hidden videos on macos

rs-eos — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 01:17:30 GMT

That definitely sounds like a bug in Canon's utility (changing the file's metadata to have it be hidden).

Hmm... having written that, I do wonder now if the files were even correctly copied over. I'm thinking that the software may be starting to copy the video files (and setting them as hidden), then once the copy is complete, it will unhide them.

When you use Command-Shift-. to temporarily unhide them, do any of the video filenames start with a period?

If they start with a period, they will always be hidden. But hopefully they don't have such filenames. You can then perform the following (note that I don't know yet how to unhide every hidden file at once within a folder)

Launch the Terminal application
At the prompt, enter in the following (but don't yet press Return/Enter) Note that <space> won't be typed in literally, ensure you have a single space after "nohidden":
- chflags nohidden<space>
In Finder, locate the folder that contains your hidden videos. Click once to select it, then drag and drop that folder onto Terminal. This will append the path to your command. But, don't yet press Return/Enter.
Press the "delete" key once. This is to remove the trailing space that was put there after dropping the folder.
Now press the forward slash key "/" and then press the "tab" key.
A listing of files in the folder should be shown.
Finally, after the "/" you typed above, start typing the file name of what you want to unhide. Then press Return or Enter. That file should now be unhidden.

Re: hidden videos on macos

hpaco — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 17:32:11 GMT

Thank you for your help.

Name files shows correctly after unhidding them. I'll try your steps but I see they have to be made file per file.

I´ll try to get hold of a windows computer to download the files in the future. =(

Re: hidden videos on macos

rs-eos — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 17:41:59 GMT

Don't know why I didn't think of this yesterday, but to unhide all files with the same extension at once, do the following:

Launch the Terminal application
At the prompt, enter in the following (but don't yet press Return/Enter) Note that <space> won't be typed in literally, ensure you have a single space after "nohidden":
- chflags nohidden<space>
In Finder, locate the folder that contains your hidden videos. Click once to select it, then drag and drop that folder onto Terminal. This will append the path to your command. But, don't yet press Return/Enter.
Press the "delete" key once. This is to remove the trailing space that was put there after dropping the folder.
Now enter in the following and press Return/Enter:
- /*.MP4

Or, enter in /*.MOV

i.e. whatever your video file extensions are.

Example full command (I have a "Canon" folder on my external "Scratch" volume):

chflags nohidden /Volumes/Scratch/Canon/*.MP4

Re: hidden videos on macos

hpaco — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 23:13:51 GMT

Thank you, yes I can unhide all the videos on a single folder.

Hopefully they fix the EOS Utility app soon as it still hides all the videos I transfer and have to manually unhide them.

Re: hidden videos on macos

muokal — Sat, 20 Jan 2024 13:11:30 GMT

Its not working for me for some reason.
this what it gives me when i type in the prompt
"zsh: no matches found: /*.MP4"

Re: hidden videos on macos

rs-eos — Sat, 20 Jan 2024 13:14:50 GMT

Did you find the location (folder) to search and drag that in Terminal?

Or, you can manually type in the command along with the path as I showed in the example in the solution.

Re: hidden videos on macos

muokal — Sat, 20 Jan 2024 13:18:58 GMT

yes i did.
I typed: chflags nohidden /Volumes/BackupDrive/Pictures /*.MP4

Re: hidden videos on macos

rs-eos — Sat, 20 Jan 2024 13:56:32 GMT

If it fails to find any files, then there are either no MPEG-4 files there (with extension .MP4), or you don't have the correct permissions to view the contents of that folder.

What happens if, in Terminal, you navigate to /Volumes/BackupDrive/Pictures/ and then do:

ls -alF

Do you see any .MP4 files listed in there?

Note also that this command wouldn't recursively process files in nested folders. To do so, add in a "-R", but be careful when doing that. e.g. to change the hidden properties of any .MP4 files in the main folder provided as well as all its subfolders:

chflags -R nohidden /Volumes/BackupDrive/Pictures /*.MP4

Re: hidden videos on macos

muokal — Sat, 20 Jan 2024 14:21:02 GMT

It worked.
I removed (*) from the written command and it worked.
Many thanks.

Re: hidden videos on macos

CDR — Sat, 11 May 2024 03:56:28 GMT

Wow - thank u so much, spent all day yesterday wondering why files were not available on SSD but this resolved - can’t believe Canon has not fixed this utility bug yet!