Tip: Opening Final Cut QuickTime movies elsewhere

One of the default settings of Apple’s Finder is different from what I’d like. I hardly ever want QuickTime movies to open in any application other than QuickTime Player. Any QuickTime movies created in Final Cut will open in Final Cut.

It used to be that I would export a QuickTime movie from Final Cut, quit and then double-click the exported movie in the Finder, wanting to check the movie before I uploaded or recompressed it. Moments after I had quit, Final Cut would open again. Final Cut would also open any movie it created at any time after… I was always surprised when Final Cut opened.

There is a way around this. To make sure any QuickTimes created in Final Cut don’t automatically launch Final Cut when double-clicked, go to the Finder and choose one of the files and select ‘Get Info’ from the File menu (or press Command-I):

First choose ‘QuckTime Player’ from the ‘Open with:’ menu. This will make this specific movie open in QuickTime Player. Then click ‘Change All…’ to make all Final Cut generated movies always open in QuickTime Player: