Noob trouble reading files

Matthew James Briggs's icon

I am using the excellent Baz Tutorials to get up and running with MaxMsp. I am using Max 6.1 on OS X 10.9.5.

I am having difficulty replicating Baz's results with reading files. For example, in this video http://youtu.be/678fhFunftg?t=3m32s I can get the file to play so long as my message is "open cherokee", but I get a "no open file" error if my message is "open cherokee.aif".

Now I'm here http://youtu.be/ztB7d8c3GMk?t=5m28s and I cannot get the dozer movie to play with either "read dozer.mov" or "read dozer", the respective error messages are "can't find file dozer.mov" and "can't find file dozer"

Does anyone know what's going on here? Why is my environment not behaving like Baz's? Why can't MaxMsp file the dozer file?

I am attaching pictures of my (unaltered/default) file preferences and the (unaltered/default) directory structure.

[Side note: as you can see in the directory structure, I have my Mac OS set to display hidden files and to display known extensions. Can't imagine this has anything to do with it though.]

FilePrefs.png
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dozerLocation.png
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Matthew James Briggs's icon

I think I figured this out. It seems that ./ in the File Preferences changes context when you open (or save?) a .maxpat file. So I solved the non-resolving dozer.mov file by adding hard-coded user search paths Macintosh HD/Application/Max... etc and it seems to work. I don't understand the cherokee vs cherokee.aif thing though.

I have another big problem following these tutorials that will require another thread, it has to do with my documentation being totally different from Baz's.