QuickTime is jumpy

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QuickTime is jumpy

I cannot swear that the problem began with the upgrade to Snow Leopard but I think it did. When I download movie trailers from Apple, they are now jumpy. I do not see a continuous flow of images but rather a series of still pictures. The audio is fine but the video is jumpy.

What can I do to correct this?

TIA.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.1), Intel Core Duo processor

Posted on Oct 17, 2009 4:43 PM

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Answer 1

Limnos

Level 10

411,223 points

Oct 17, 2009 9:20 PM in response to Beren

I am surprised this is happening on an Intel computer. Often it is due to the slower hardware of older computers (especially G4s) not being able to handle newer encoding video formats.

Check things that might be slowing down your computer. Enough RAM? Too little hard drive space?

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Answer 2

Beren Author

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Oct 17, 2009 9:31 PM in response to Limnos

I have plenty of free space on my hard drive. 1 gig of memory. I haven't experienced this problem until recently.

Any other ideas? How do I troubleshoot this? Any information I can provide that would make things easier for you all to diagnose the problem?

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Answer 3

Limnos

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411,223 points

Oct 17, 2009 9:42 PM in response to Beren

What happens if you use a player such as VLC?

I recall seeing similar comments in earlier topics so you may want to search this forum for others with similar issues.

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Answer 4

Oct 18, 2009 11:28 AM in response to Beren

I've been having the same problem for a while, with an iBook G4 & Quicktime 7.6.4 - the picture is just a staggered set of still images, and is particularly bad with HD videos and Vimeo, but also MPEG4 files. VLC is fine, but I can't see a way of having it play streamed videos.

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Answer 5

Beren Author

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Oct 30, 2009 4:27 PM in response to Beren

I thought I would bump this and see if anyone has any suggestions how I can correct this problem. I have plenty of space on my hard drive. The OS is fully updated. Any ideas, friends? This jumpy Quicktime is driving me nuts.

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Answer 6

McTweak

Level 1

9 points

Dec 24, 2009 7:57 PM in response to Beren

I'm having the same "jumpy" problem with Quicktime Player version 10.0 (90.3.1). I did not have this problem until after upgrading to Snow Leopard. (VLC plays the same videos perfectly.)

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Answer 7

Dec 30, 2009 8:18 PM in response to Beren

I too started having this problem after installing Snow Leopard. I have plenty of free space and I recently repaired my disk permissions, so I'm not really sure what to do.

Since a good deal of people are having this problem, especially with playback of HD videos, I'm assuming a patch of some sort will need to be issued soon for Quicktime Pro.

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Answer 8

Dec 30, 2009 8:24 PM in response to McTweak

Thank you, thank you, thank you for suggesting VLC! I just downloaded it and it runs my HD videos PERFECTLY!

No offense Quicktime, but I'm sticking with VLC until Apple fixes you

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Answer 9

Beren Author

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Feb 28, 2010 4:29 PM in response to Beren

The jumpiness of Quick Time remains a problem for me. The high def movie trailers run most smoothly for me if I only play them after the entire trailer has been downloaded; but even then I still experience periodic jumpiness. The soundtrack is fine, but the images do not flow smoothly. Sometimes it's like jumping from one still photo to another still photo.

How can I troubleshoot this problem? What can I do to correct it? Any ideas anyone?

I have cleared all my caches. I have run all the maintenance scripts. I have run all the cleaning tasks provided by OnyX. Yet still QT runs jumpy for me.

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Answer 10

Beren Author

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Mar 2, 2010 5:48 AM in response to Beren

I finally figured out how to download an Apple trailer and save it on my hard disk. I still have the jumpy problem when I watch the trailer with Quick Time; but it flows smoothly when I watch it with VLC.

I sure wish Apple would fix QT or tell me how to fix it on my end. Are the Apple techs even aware of this problem? Are they working on a fix?

Can anyone help?

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Answer 11

Mar 7, 2010 2:52 PM in response to Beren

I'm also having this issue. After some troubleshooting though, this doesn't appear to be a QuickTime issue.

On my machine under OS X 10.5.x, the full-screen MPEG-4 video playback was fine under QuickTime, Flash, or Silverlight. Once I upgraded to 10.6, I started having playback problems with MPEG-4 regardless of the source.

VLC plays the same videos perfectly both under 10.5 and after the upgrade to 10.6. This is because VLC uses its own MPEG-4 codec whereas QuickTime, Flash, and Silverlight rely on Apple's.

Long story short, it's Apple's MPEG-4 codec that's broken and needs to be patched. As of 10.6.2 it's still broken.

Message was edited by: SeanPeoples

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Answer 12

Mar 7, 2010 8:43 PM in response to SeanPeoples

this is a terrible issue for me, if i am exporting from final cut pro to get an mov file as a master to go to a dvd duplicators can i assume that the file is ok if it is jumpy in QT x? i am very unhappy with apple on this issue and their tech support would have to know about it yet when i speak with them on the phone they don't mention it. what to do???

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Answer 13

Mar 10, 2010 4:43 PM in response to Beren

I have the same problem and it happened with the Snow Leopard upgrade.

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Answer 14

Beren Author

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Mar 10, 2010 6:29 PM in response to Steve Keller

I sure hope the Apple techs are watching this thread and are working on a fix for this problem!

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