Quicktime Screen Recording freezing during playback.

Question

Quicktime Screen Recording freezing during playback.

I've been using QuickTime to record video of me playing video games for a while. Every so often, when I end the recording, I'll receive a message that says "Your recording could not be saved." And while the recording does save, it will freeze up halfway through the playback. For some reason the audio continues, but the video will freeze and not continue. Furthermore, this only happens with certain recordings, about 20% of the time. I have tried bringing it into editing softwares and rendering it, I have tried file fixing programs, and I have tried converting it into a different file format, none of which worked. I can only conclude that the issue must be with my computer or my QuickTime program. My computer is a Late 2012 21.5" iMac, Running macOS Catalina with 8GB of DDR3 RAM and a 2.7GHz Quad-Core Intel i5. I hope someone can help me out with this issue!

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Aug 20, 2021 3:41 PM

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Answer 1

Eric--F

Community Specialist

Aug 21, 2021 12:13 PM in response to WeepingAngel123

Thanks for posting in the Apple Support Communities WeepingAngel123,

We understand you're having issues with some of your screen recordings.

If you haven't yet, make sure your iMac has plenty of available storage space. The following page offers guidance that may help: Free up storage space on your Mac

If more than 20% of your total storage capacity is free, and you continue encountering the same issue, test to see whether the behavior occurs in safe mode. That mode will temporarily disable non-essential software from loading at startup. Whether or not the behavior occurs there, can isolate the type of software safe mode disables as being a contributing factor.

macOS User Guide - Start up your Mac in safe mode

Cheers!

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Answer 2

Eric--F

Community Specialist

Aug 24, 2021 11:48 AM in response to WeepingAngel123

Hi WeepingAngel123,

We're inclined to agree. Since the behavior isn't occurring in a new account, it's likely related to settings or files from the original account.

To start, we recommend removing login items in your original account, and testing to see if there's any change.

Remove login items to resolve startup problems on your Mac

The issue could also be related to QuickTime settings, which would be user specific.

Once the issue is resolved in your original account, you can remove the new account created for testing using the same steps you took to set it up, except you'll click the "-", rather than "+". Just be sure nothing was saved or copied into the new account that you need, before removing it.

Thanks!

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Answer 3

Aug 22, 2021 12:16 PM in response to Nicholas_B2

Hi Nicholas_B2,

I didn't experience the issue on a new admin account after several test recordings. I think the problem may be in the home folder of my account.

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Answer 4

Aug 21, 2021 12:35 PM in response to Eric--F

Hi Eric,

I received the same error upon finishing my screen recording in safe mode, so I don't believe it's any of the safe mode software that is causing the issue. I also have ~400GB of available storage out of 1TB, so storage is certainly not the issue.

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Answer 5

Aug 21, 2021 12:59 PM in response to WeepingAngel123

Thanks for keeping the community posted with your results WeepingAngel123,

Now that we know startup software and storage space aren't the cause, the next logical step is to isolate whether the behavior may be isolated to a single user account.

To do this, create a new Admin account on your Mac, then capture another screen recording from within that account. If the behavior doesn't occur in a new user, that would tell us something within the Home folder of your primarily account may be the cause. Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac

If you encounter the same behavior in a new user, trying running Apple Diagnostics on your Mac to see whether any issues are found. Use Apple Diagnostics to test your Mac

Take care!

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Quicktime Screen Recording freezing during playback.

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