QuickTime Player 7.0.2 won't load files larger than 10GB

Er... can't you read your computer screen? Because if you could, wouldn't you see there is a difference between MB and GB. I mentioned 10GB, NOT 10MB. You know, there's that little difference between them. My GB has first letter G, and it means GIGAbyte, while your MB has M, (NOT G!) which means MEGAbyte. And megabyte is quite a different thing from a gigabyte, you better trust me on that 🙂

Second point: if my file were corrupt, it wouldn't load properly in other video editors, and this is NOT the case. I can load and recompress it in VirtualDub, my primary Windows video editing tool. All THIRTY GIGABYTES. Not just TEN GIGABYTES as in my QT Player 7.0.2.

Since you've obviously passed the 4 gig size, I suggest that the QuickTime Player application is hitting a "end of file" error. Common when multiple files are "pasted" together.

This 30GB MJPEG video I'm trying to load in QT 7.0.2 was not pasted together. It's been produced by recompressing another large video in VirtualDub, popular Windows video editor. It's been produced as one single file from the beginning. No joining/pasting files at all.

The "timestamp" in the file is telling QT Player that the end of the file is reached. It quits playing. Acceptable?

Nope, not acceptable. Why only QT Player cannot load full file? Why VirtualDub and any other player (Windows Media Player and Media Player Classic for example) load the file properly, all 30 gigabytes of it and play it from the beginning to the end?

Simply hitting the spacebar should resume playback.

Simply hitting spacebar actually jumps to the first frame and then plays video from the beginning.

If the 30GB MJPEG (a format for preserving quality) were "exported" to a non editing format (say H.264) wouldn't the entire file play?

If it were exported, it definitely would. How do you propose to export it to H.264 if QT Player can't even load MJPEG properly? Yes, I can easily export first 10GB of that video, but how do you think I should export the rest?

do you have quicktime's mjpeg codec? shot in the dark...

Of course I do. It plays this large video just great. Except that it plays only first ten gigabytes of it.

just as an aside...why not export something you figure would work like an uncompressed AVI that will be larger than 10GBs and if that plays then it's a codec issue. if it stops at 10GB then there's a player issue.

Tried it. Exported 20GB uncompressed AVI in VirtualDub. Loaded it in QT Player 7.0.2. Worked great, QT plays all the video, all twenty gigabytes. So, it's an MJPEG codec limitation then? I should probably submit a bug to Apple, but I'll wait for more feedback here, just to make sure it's not my fault, but a real bug in Apple MJPEG. If someone else tries it too and has the same problem with Apple MJPEG, then I'll submit a bug right away.

do you have quicktime's mjpeg codec? shot in the dark...

Of course I do. It plays this large video just great. Except that it plays only first ten gigabytes of it.

just as an aside...why not export something you figure would work like an uncompressed AVI that will be larger than 10GBs and if that plays then it's a codec issue. if it stops at 10GB then there's a player issue.

Tried it. Exported 20GB uncompressed AVI in VirtualDub. Loaded it in QT Player 7.0.2. Worked great, QT plays all the video, all twenty gigabytes. So, it's an MJPEG codec limitation then? I should probably submit a bug to Apple, but I'll wait for more feedback here, just to make sure it's not my fault, but a real bug in Apple MJPEG. If someone else tries it too and has the same problem with Apple MJPEG, then I'll submit a bug right away.

I wonder...If you right-click the file and look at properties what size do you see?

31.0 GB (33,298,931,712 bytes)
That's what Windows Explorer tells about that MJPEG.

If you click at Show Movie info what does it write?

Data Size: Unknown
Duration: 0:33:28.12

The real duration of that video is 90+ minutes. Not 33 minutes as QT says.

Now, here's another MJPEG I just made. Its size is 1GB. Windows Explorer says about its size:

0.99 GB (1,070,766,080 bytes)

And QT Player says:

Data Size: 1021.3 MB

And the Duration field there is now correct. So, QT Player goes nuts when I load 30GB MJPEG. It loads only 10GB, plays it just fine (only 10GB though), tells me that duration is only 33 minutes (that's exactly 10GB) and says that data size is unknown. Nothing like this happens when I load 1GB MJPEG. QT Player behaves 100% correct in this case.

So it looks more and more like Apple MJPEG codec bug. Let's see if someone else can test this and reproduce the problem.