Troubleshooting QuickTime

Sorting through the stack of email regarding QuickTime 3.0, these seemed the most "solid" reports thus far:

Sound Manager problems Sound Manager 3.3 is installed as part of QuickTime 3.0. According to Apple TIL #30403, the file "provides low level services which allow QuickTime to play and mix digital audio." However, several readers report problems related to the presence of this file (exact symptoms mayvary depending upon what Mac model you have):

Seth Kromholz: "With Sound Manager installed, I had a sound output problem: plugging in my headphones did not result in sound being muted through the internal speakers! Disabling the Sound Manager extension fixed this problem."

Rich Bottiglieri had similar problems on his 7100 (external speakers would not function unless built-in speaker was also active). Disabling Sound Manager (and Sound control) resolved the problem.

Bob Grip and Steven Massey had a related problem: External speakers are always muted in favor of the internal speaker.

Jim Fowler had similar problems, including "losing the Sound Out" option from Monitors & Sound. Disabling Sound Manager 3.3 solved this. He was using a Power Mac 6100 running Mac OS 7.6.1.

Richard Godard: "It caused freezes when changing sound via the Control Strip module on a Power Mac 8500. Disabling the extension solved the problem."

Photoshop Regarding previously reported problems between QuickTime 3.0 and Photoshop (which I again emphasize do not seem to affect all users), Marc Pawliger (of Adobe Systems) sent the following note: "The only time Photoshop uses any QT functionality is to allow QT to display the preview PICTs in the Open dialog. And we don't even directly control how it does that - we just use the specific kind of standard Apple Open dialog that includes a preview and the system software calls QT to do the work as each file is selected. If there is a problem with this, simply unchecking the Show Thumbnail checkbox will turn the preview off."

None-the-less, I continue to get reports of problems with QuickTime and Photoshop. Some of these reports may relate to a more general JPEG problem described next. However, Mitch Leung claims that he gets crashes "caused by QuickTime 3.0 with Photoshop 4.0.1,when working on large files and making GIF files." For him, disabling the QD3DCustomElements extension solved the problem. Claude Strobbe claims that unchecking "QuickTime Exchange" in the QuickTime Settings control panel solved this problem.

JPEG crashes QuickTime 3.0 may be particularly likely to cause problems with JPEG files.

Brian Tuttle writes: "My Mac crashes when trying to open JPEGs using QuickTime 3.0. I have been able to reproduce the problem with Photoshop, GraphicConverter, and JPEGView." Tom Mulhall reported the exact same problem. I believe I have been a victim of this myself.

Fabrizio Frattini (and others) report that this problem may also occur in a web browser, when loading a web page that contains a JPEG image.

Fixes? Brian notes: With JPEGView, if you turn off the "Use QuickTime to decompress JPEGs" preference, you will likely prevent the crash. Another reader (Patrick) had this problem and claimed that the basic fixes of zapping the PRAM and rebuilding the desktop cured it.

Of related interest, a message from Tom Dowdy (of Apple) on comp.sys.mac.system reads: "One thing that is new for QuickTime 3.0 is that graphics importers (used by Desktop Pictures, but also lots of other applications) now draw using high quality rather than normal quality. The result is much better display quality of images, particular on < 32 bit monitors. However, this process is slower than it was before. We're going to investigate this some more, and probably rev Desktop Pictures to avoid this slowdown. In the meantime, recompressing the picture you use to be something other than JPEG may help here." (Thanks, Stan.)