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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Quicktime 7.1.3 can't export

mak - Mar 1, 2007 - 6:03 pm

HI,
having a problem exporting. Tried a source mp4 audio video file.. no go and also other quicktime movies that I know are good. When I go to export, doesn't matter what format, it pauses says its calculating time and 3 seconds later it say failed(10) and thats it. It does create a zero kb file with the name of the intended file but no luck after that.
Dual G5 2.0 PPC, 2 gigs ram, osx 10.4.8. I just installed popwire WMV-9 component to make WMV's but this problem existed before that. I uninstalled flip4mac because I understand it has caused problems and I was looking for a better solution in popwire.
I am stumped.. have gone to the Apple discussion board and this same issue looks like it was never resolved.
any help would be appreciated. Again, it is not a corrupt source file as I have tried other files that I know are good.
I can also not "share" the video.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread....24434&#2424434
might give a clue.
thanks
Mak Wolven

stottm - Mar 2, 2007 - 8:06 am

Somewhere somehow a file that was installed by Quicktime may be damaged or otherwise inoperable. I can only assume that you've already tried the infamous Disk Utility Repair Permissions and trying another user account (create one if you have to) and deleting the ~/Library/Preferences/ Quicktime .plist files.

If you haven't, the two easiest things are the disk utility repair permissions and creating a new user account. If it works with a new user account then something about your normal user account is messing up Quicktime. Could be a great many things. Try deleting the Library preferences .plist files for Quicktime in the user account that's not working. They will be recreated by the applications when they run.

Alternatively, you can backup your data, reload the operating system and restore your data. A firewire drive is highly recommended as well as SuperDuper which can duplicate your disk. As long as the external disk is larger then the internal disk you can make an exact copy.
SuperDuper is fast and free. http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/

QuickTime is one of those really large really integrated software packages that is practically a part of the operating system. It's used all over the place internally within Mac OS X. Which is why I recommend just backing up and rebuilding the system. It's actually faster then trying the find the problem and surgically fix it.

Now if you are really adventurous and refuse to rebuild your system to fix this problem, you can try the following. *** DANGER **** the following information comes with a full disclaimer against liability. You do this and it screws up your computer, then it's not anyone's fault but your own.

1. BACKUP your system, cannot stress this enough.
2. Open the Terminal under /Applications/Utilities
3. Type the following commands pressing ENTER after each, it's case sensitive.

cd /Library/Receipts
lsbom QuickTime713.pkg/Contents/Archive.bom | open -f -a textedit

This will give you a TextEdit window listing all 7000+ files and folders for QuickTime. i.e. the Archive.bom file contains a complete list of all the files and folders accessed during an installation of QuickTime ver. 7.1.3.

So what do you do with this list?

4. One at a time you go through each file and folder and delete it or it's contents, depending on what it is. You did do that Backup right?

5. Before you reboot, you re-install QuickTime 7.1.3.

6. Cross your fingers and pray.... Burning black and red candles and sacrificing a chicken are entirely optional. ;-)

Again, this may kill your machine or it just might fix it. Worse case scenario, always have a backup and if all else fails, do a full wipe and re-install then restore your apps and your data files. You can use the Firewire Target disk mode to boot from an external backup made with SuperDuper or you can use the Migration Assistant to copy your user account and applications to the newly installed operating system. Or you can run SuperDuper again and restore right back to where you were originally before you started.

Having an external disk, preferably a firewire disk is a must nowadays. In fact, having two is even better. When Leopard ships it will have a Time Machine backup utility that will make it even easier to backup our systems using an external disk. I have 3 external drives. One for SuperDuper cloning, one for other backups and a third for large media files when I'm making movies, etc.

Hmmm... Two 400GB drives huh? You state in your profile you have 800GB's of disk space. That's gonna be painful to backup if you have a lot of data. I am assuming you have two disks? Hopefully the operating system and applications resides on one disk and the other disk is data. That way you only need to backup/restore one disk, the one with the operating system. It would be a good idea to have an external firewire drive, just make sure it's big enough to handle the 400GB's or whatever your system disk or partition size is.

Best of luck in solving the problem. Perhaps another tech will offer a suggestion that fixes the problem or someone else will have fixed it previously and knows exactly what files to replace, or what software to remove, etc.

mak - Mar 2, 2007 - 9:38 am

I discovered that a Sheer video codec was the problem. I went into library/quicktime and found I had installed the codec there and once I removed it, the export problem disappeared. This conflict had me worried but it worked out in the end. Thank you so much for your assistance. macosx tech support gives me the confidence to explore, solve and hopefully share solutions with all of the mac community. I appreciate your help.
regards,
mak