Still having issues with Quicktime

Normally, I could care less about Quicktime, the only reason it's on my PC at all is for the streaming video in Second Life. So, when it quick working a LONG time back, I was pretty pissed. Since then, I have scoured forums all over, trying various fixes, some even questionable, but the end result is always the same. This frustrates me greatly as I can no longer watch 90% of the streaming movies that I have before. To make matters worse, I just recently wiped my C drive to get rid of some problems and get a fresh start. i figured, if anything would fix it this would. Upon coming back into SL, I still could not view streaming video. So, this means it's completely a fault with Quicktime (I was running SL without a firewall or anything else running on the PC that, to my knowledge, would have an effect). I posted a question about it some time back, one that has been over looked for months now. I really hate their forum set up, but I'll try it again. In the meantime, since SL is the only place I actually use Quicktime, I thought I'd ask here as well.

Okay, here is the issue that I am having with streaming: All videos will buffer and begin to play. I will get 1 frame on the screen, and about a second of sound. Sometimes this frame is garbled with green and purple, other times it's just a frozen frame. Sometimes I get sound, other times not. Sometimes, if I wait for a few minutes another frame will pop up, which will be whatever is currently playing (not the next frame in the sequence) and another snippet of sound.

I'm about ready to give up on ever watching anything streaming in SL ever again and just deleting Quicktime outright. If anyone has experienced this problem and solved it, please let me know what you did. If anyone would like to try and help, and needs additional information, please let me know what info you need.

I've helped set a few people up with qt. I'll be home in about two hours and might be in a better spot to help, but off the top of my head, (a) are you on a PC or a mac, and (b) did you download the newest version of the program?

I have exactly the same problem with Quicktime in SL and it ONLY happens inside the SL viewer. If I play the URL in Quicktime outside of SL it plays just fine.

And, yes, I have the latest version of QT.

What I have found, by comparing notes with several others for whom this is also a problem, is that if you click the media pause button (not the stop button), wait a few seconds and then press play again, the video will usually begin playing normally. You may need to repeat this a few times to get it going but it always seems to work for everyone I know who has tried it.

I am certainly unhappy that this continues to happen but it has to be something in the interface between SL and Quicktime since the video plays perfectly in Quicktime outside of SL. Also, I have found that it helps to reduce your viewer graphics settings a bit to reduce client side lag while watching videos.

As always... YMMV.

EDIT: And before Ghosty asks... my system specs:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Series Processor (1866 MHz)
Memory: 2048 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce 8600 GT/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 2.1.2
LLMozLib Version: [LLMediaImplLLMozLib] - 2.01.17473 (Mozilla GRE version 1.8.1.13_0000000000)

Final question. Since the url works fine outside of SL, and hitting the pause seems to clear it up inside SL - and you sometimes have to repeat this a few times - what is the download speed you get from your ISP, and what is the bandwidth setting at in your SL preferences?

I ask because SL is pretty bandwidth happy, and so is streaming video more often than not. If you guys are on a weak DSL connect (for example), that could well be the issue with video and SL at the same time.

Speedtest.net reports 3572 kbps download between me and San Francisco. I'm on cable with 5mb download service and my BW setting is at 1500 in the SL client.

Heh. So much for that theory.

/tosses theory in wastebasket

OK, I'm stumped. I have zero issues in this regard. The only real difference between our systems is that I'm running the nVidia 7300 GT, and my processor is a Celeron D @ 3.2 GHz.

Do you have other services running that are sucking bandwidth away from SL and QT? I'm just grasping here.

At most I have Yahoo Messenger, Thunderbird (email) and Firefox open but it doesn't make much difference even if I close all of those.

And I've tossed my share of theories in the waste bin too

Maybe someone else will have some ideas.

And my friend that has this problem is running it on a PowerPC G5 Mac but I don't know any more about his config.

Sorry for not replying back to this is so long... i feel a bit bad forgetting about this... It suddenly hit me again when I was at ATLUS and couldn't watch the video stream there.

I've run SL with nothing else, even QT by itself using the stream URL from the video that won't play in SL. No change. What makes it worse is that I was given another stream from the owner of the first that runs off the same server and uses the same codecs. It plays fine. There is no difference between either, other than size. Bandwidth isn't an issue though, because it works fine on other computers on my network. To make matters worse, my whole PC is completely new now, there is no reason why this should still be plaguing me.I'll post my specs and codecs, but since my specs were entirely different when this first happened... and since I had no codecs when i first tried... i don't know if either would help. I was totally ignored at the QuickTime website and the Lindens totld me to go tell the QT guys. So, this is like, as i said, last resort.

Windows XP SP2
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.40
3 gigs of RAM
nVidia 8800 GT
(I'd have to look the board up, I stupidly cleared out all my boxes... trying to clean my hell hole)

Codecs that I have are al lth codecs Zoom Player gets

DirectVobSub
FFDShow
DCoder's Bass
Halli's Media Splitter
SHOUTcast Audio Streaming
Real Media
Flash Video
DScaler MPEG2/AC3/DTS/DVD
Gabest's CD-Audio

if I couldn't play any streams, I'd be more accepting of my fate, but the fact that all the quicktime movie trailers play, and some other streams work fine too... It makes it so frustrating when others wont.

Any suggestions are welcome, even if they don't work. At least I'd be able to try things instead of sitting here not knowing what to do.

This isn't much more than a bump. But just a wild shot in the dark at something to try: some card manufacturers include special video settings in their graphics control panel. Maybe there's a difference there that causes some videos to freeze during play even when others with the same codec play nicely. (I can't do much to test this theory because the only nVidia card I have is in a Linux box, and the driver's video settings are minimal at best. But I've noticed ATI's Catalyst thing has lots of knobs and levers that look video-related.)

Hmmm, I'm not seeing anything like that. One of the other PCs I mentioned is running a similar card and no issues there. Also it's pretty safe to assume it's not the videocard as others that have my same card and drivers have no issues what so ever. I'm startign to think there really isn't a solution to this, as the cause seems to be something that can't really be nailed down.

I did try lookign through settings for the videocard though, within the provided things that came with the drivers but to no avail, it was a good idea, hadn't tried that before. Sadly, no dice.