Q: OSX Lion + 2011 iMac 27'' + Video = Freeze

Note: The freeze happens with just trying to play QuickTime videos off your computer (not off the inet) as well.

Thread is growing. I think this is a Lion-wide problem, and not isolated to just a few...

By the way, has anyone tried "Automatic Restart" in the "Energy Saving" Preference with this problem? Does it work?

Since installing Lion I cannot get any video at all when running skype.

I originally thought it must be that Skype needed an update, which I did but still nothing.

I've been having the exact same problem. Base model mid 2011 21.5" iMac. Freezing upon playing videos from youtube, itunes, quickplay, Havent tried iMovie. But same thing as everyone else. Hard reset is the only fix. Apple, ARE YOU LISTENING???

Forgot to add that this all started with my upgrade to LION.

@inhalewaste

"Automatic Restart" in the "Energy Saving" Preference has no effect since there is no real kernel panic (it was activated for me, but I still have to hard reboot the iMac).

Well so much for a theory,

Did a clean Lion install this morning and did seem to be ok, played some YouTube vids, watched some live.twit.tv, thought I'd gotten to the bottom.  However just had a system lockup when trying to view a TiwtVid video posted from twitter.

Looks like a clean install isn't the solution either.  Sorry guys, we're gonna have to wait for an update from Apple.

Hope it's of help.

i'm sorry but i have a clean install of lion on my imac and i have the bug :/

Yeah ecphotographie,  that's what I've said.  A Clean install will not solve this issue, we need to wait for Apple to either release patch or at least acknowledge the problem.

Having the same issue since after installing lion on wed.  Videos online and in itunes cause a complete lock up except for mouse cursor movement, and requires a reboot.

I also just recieved an email from apple that my less than 2 month old imac possibly has a defective hard drive and they're gonna do me the "favor" of giving me one that might not be broken.  This past week has not made me feel great about giving apple so much money.

I don't know if it is more than a temporary thing but I have unplugged all of my USB cords and the computer doesn't seem to want to freeze now. I know it is not a fix but it may be a small step in the right direction. I do not have confidence in one of my hubs (iPhone wouldn't sync plugged into it) so maybe it is a USB driver issue. I know my Apple USB modem is not 64 bit so maybe there is an issue with some USB devices.

Never mind just froze again.

Can someone record video of what the crash looks like. I've been trying, but now I can't seem to cause it to freeze up (sleep mode, wake, play video) usually does it. I reported this to a couple of blogs and they want video of it before they post the story. If we get the story out there, Apple will move faster to fix this.

I'm not sure what there is to record. Once you press play or whatever, it just stops (except for the cursor).

The issue does seem to be a hard one to reproduce deliberately. Two of my crashes have happened when itunes was downloading more than one item (podcasts in both cases) and I attempted to watch a Youtube video. This was after sleep incidentally. Perhaps try that?

Beyond that, just keep your phone handy so you can point it at the screen when it happens again.

I know, but they want to see what the symptoms look like. I have my iPhone handy, because obviously screen recording won't work.

@OverHaze - if you get it to crash can you please record it?