QuickTime 7.3: a trickle of troubles

As usual after a QuickTime update, our readers are reporting a variety of things that they say were working before the update but are not working after it. Here are some examples.

• Web movies Once again, movies viewed on the Web stop working for some people. Aside from the fixes we suggested earlier, one reader says that while removing ~/Library/com.apple.quicktime.plugin.preferences.plist did not work, removing QuickTime Plugin.plugin (presumably from /Library/Internet Plugins) did. That solution is a little puzzling, though: this is one of the key files placed by the QuickTime installer, and if the QuickTime Plugin is not showing these movies, what is? It might be better to search for conflicting, third-party plugins and remove them instead. Remember, you can always use Pacifist to discover what is placed by the installer and what (by process of elimination) is not.

• Broken applications One reader reports that Roxio's Popcorn 3 has stopped working, and performed some rather careful testing to confirm that the QT update was the cause:

  Hello, it appears Roxio's Popcorn 3 is broken with the latest QuickTime 7.3 update under Leopard. The applications bounces in the dock and then quits without warning, no crash log either. I've trashed all the prefs and reinstalled the software to no avail. I double checked on another computer that Popcorn was working fine with QT 7.2. Then I ran software update, installed QT 7.3, reboot and now the same thing is happening on both computers. The application icon bounces and aborts almost immediately. Popcorn 2.0.1 still seems to work but it doesn't have the iPhone export options I need.

  Humble Daisy's ProfCast is officially broken by this update. A reader sent in a copy of a note from the developers:

  Yesterday Apple released QuickTime 7.3, an update to its QuickTime software. Apple has made some fundamental changes to QuickTime and to the underlying CoreAudio technologies in this new release of QuickTime (these changes are also evident in Leopard). If you have not upgraded to QuickTime 7.3, please wait to do so. We are working on providing a resolution to these fun new updates as quickly as we can!

• Loss of editing Two readers have told us that although they are QuickTime Pro users (for example, they can use Save As in QuickTime Player), the selection indicators have vanished from their QuickTime controller, so they can't select a stretch of movie for copying or cutting:

  I am now unable to find, much less use, the selection indicators in any movie -- they have just disappeared and do not appear when I move the cursor over the relevant portion of the playback controls. This means I cannot edit or otherwise select any portion of a movie.

  And another:

  After happily using QT 7.1.3 for a long time, I just upgraded my PPC running OSX 10.3.9 (Panther) to QT 7.3. I also run Leopard on my PPC Powerbook, and upgraded that to QT 7.3 as well. Now I find that the selection triangles (which I use constantly to edit small movies) have suddenly disappeared from most of the movies I have... and new small movies in mpg or mov format don't have the triangles visible. I have thousands of these movies (small theatre and performance clips), and am so frustrated that I may have to revert to an earlier version of QuickTime. I have a registered copy of QuickTime Pro 7. I have downloaded a few new small QT movies, and there are no selection triangles visible on these as well. Although some of the movies I have, with looping points already set, have retained their visibility. It almost seems as if the triangles have disappeared from movies who have not previously had loop points set, but I have not confirmed this as consistent. Even more odd is that I can set the in and out points using keyboard commands or the "o" and "i" keys. The movie will loop, but the triangles are still invisibile.

• Bluetooth trouble One user reports that Bluetooth pairing has stopped working, so that he can't use his wireless keyboard with this computer:

  After downloading today's QuickTime and iTunes updates, a re-boot is required. Upon rebooting, I discovered that my Bluetooth Apple keyboard was no longer paired with my G5 running Mac OS 10.5. Despite over an hour attempting to re-pair the keyboard and the G5, I have been unsuccessful - the keyboard is identified but refuses to pair after inputting the pairing code sequence. I've replaced the batteries and tried a second Bluetooth Apple keyboard to no avail. Both keyboards quickly and successfully pair with my wife's G5 iMac - I have refrained from installing the QuickTime and iTunes updates as I have only a single backup wired keyboard.

  That is the sort of problem for which one would usually resort to goat-sacrifice voodoo, such as zapping the PRAM.

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