Mac OS error -208 when opening MIDI files in Quicktime Pro

Question

Mac OS error -208 when opening MIDI files in Quicktime Pro

Quicktime no longer plays MIDI files. it used to. now i get the Mac OS error -208 claiming the file is corrupted. but i can play the file on a PC, and other people receiving the files by email can open them (though a few other Mac owners are now also having trouble for the first time).

this problem started about two weeks ago. i did nothing different to my machine (MacBook pro), and wonder if a background system update is to blame.

i uninstalled Quicktime and reinstalled it. no luck. any ideas?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on Aug 25, 2007 6:34 AM

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Answer 1

Aug 25, 2007 2:54 PM in response to Brian Brewer1

Repair permissions from the Utility Menu & restart or repair disk/permissions directly from your Tiger Install DVD.

See if that get rids of the error. If not, you may need to update your OS along w/updating everything else your Software Update says your computer needs.
Your system info confirms you are still using OS 10.4.6.

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Answer 2

Aug 29, 2007 8:14 PM in response to Baby-Boomer-USofA

none of that worked.

turns out it was an error in the MIDI file, which a friend discovered when he ran his MIDIs through some kind of freeware MIDI check. the original files were fixed-length 512-byte records, but MIDI has a definite end marker. in the files that gave me problems, there was space left over in the last record (neat binary zeroes, not "garbage"); i think this came from silence or non-data that didn't add up to 512-bytes. Most players don't have a problem with it. But perhaps a recent update of QuickTime (they update frequently) made it want the file to be EXACTLY the right length. Files that end at the end marker seem to play fine; even QuickTime seems to have no problem with them.

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Answer 3

Aug 30, 2007 6:31 AM in response to Brian Brewer1

here's some further clarification, provided by John Hetland, who worked out the fix:

1. The MIDI analyzer I used is a cool freeware program midi2txt.exe from
http://www.gnmidi.com/

2. When I ran midi2txt with the -error switch and the name of the MIDI file,
it said something like "Warning: 21 bytes of garbage at end of file." It
turned out that the MIDI file was made in fixed-length records, and there
was space left over in the last record. This situation is simply ignored by
most players, but the current version of QuickTime apparently doesn't know
what to do if the file is not EXACTLY the length needed for the MIDI codes.

3. I can't give instructions for fixing the error because what I fixed was
not any MIDI file; I fixed the program I wrote that generated the flawed
MIDIs. But if someone should encounter this very problem in a MIDI from some
other source, and that someone has expertise in file manipulation, one
should look for hex 'FF2F00' in the last record and delete everything that
follows it.

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Answer 4

Sep 10, 2007 8:43 AM in response to Brian Brewer1

+It turned out that the MIDI file was made in fixed-length records, and there+
+was space left over in the last record. This situation is simply ignored by+
+most players, but the current version of QuickTime apparently doesn't know+
+what to do if the file is not EXACTLY the length needed for the MIDI codes.+

MIDI files with "garbage" at the end also cannot be imported into iTunes (a friend wants to convert them to AIFF to produce an audio CD).

Will this be "corrected" in a future version of QuickTime? Or was this behaviour introduced as a measure against malicious code which might use a MIDI file as carrier?

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