Safari 6.1 on MacOS 10.8.5 not play quicktime movies

Question

Safari 6.1 on MacOS 10.8.5 not play quicktime movies

Trying to view quicktime movies in Safari brings up the Quicktime Q graphic with a big question mark. Safari->Help-> Installed Plug-Ins includes:

QuickTime Plug-in 7.7.1

The QuickTime Plugin allows you to view a wide variety of multimedia content in web pages. For more information, visit the QuickTime Web site. — from file “QuickTime Plugin.plugin”.

in the list of plug ins and the /Library/Internet Plug-Ins folder does have the file "QuickTime Plugin.plugin".

I have tried downloading the older Quicktime Player 7.app and then rebooting the computer and I still cannot view the Quicktime movies in Safari. I can view the quicktime movies in Firefox (version 24.0).

I have also deleted the items in the Library folder:

Caches/com.apple.Safari/Cache.db

Preferences/com.apple.quicktime.plugin.preferences.plist

Preferences/QuickTime Preferences

rebooting and relaunching Safari all with negative results.

All of these have been suggested by people in previous postings dating back to Fall 2012 or earlier, so I'm out of ideas.

Is there anything else I should try?

Running Safari 6.1 on Mac OS 10.8.5 on a MacBook Pro with Retina display.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on Nov 5, 2013 1:41 AM

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Answer 1

andyBall_uk

Level 7

20,516 points

Nov 5, 2013 4:00 AM in response to Nicolas Strobel

Please give an example site where this happens. Does it persist in a new or Guest user account ?.

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Answer 2

Nov 5, 2013 4:52 PM in response to andyBall_uk

Well, this was on webpages I had created as lecture slides for my classes. I've just discovered that Safari acts differently if I view other websites than if I view webpages on my own computer's harddrive. If I put an example page on the webserver

http://www2.bakersfieldcollege.edu/nstrobel/astronomy/s3test.htm

and bring it up in Safari, I can see the quicktime movie in Safari.

When I view the same webpage (s3test.htm) that has the quicktime movie embedded in it on my local harddrive, Safari displays the shaded Quicktime logo with the big question mark.

Why Safari should care whether the webpage is on some webserver vs. having the same file and graphics on the local computer harddrive is beyond me.

Since all of my lecture slides are webpages I have created, I'd like to know what hooks or coding I now need to put in the html to get Safari to display the movies in my lecture slide webpages on my local computer's harddrive.

Here's the very simple html code for the s3test.htm file:

============

<html>

<head>

<title>Sun's Interior</title>

</head>

<body>

<h2>The Sun is entirely hot gas all the way to the center.</h2>

</center>

<H2>Interior</H2>

<UL>

<LI>

<h3>Core: 16 million K and density 20 times greater than iron but still gaseous!

Energy generated here in the innermost 10% of the Sun's mass.

</h3>

<LI>

<h3>Radiative Zone:

Photons carry energy outward. About 85% of the Sun's radius.</h3>

<LI>

<h3>Convection Zone: Photons blocked, so huge chunks of gas carry energy outward to surface. Outer 15% of

the Sun's radius.</h3>

<LI>

<h3><em>Photosphere: </em>here the photons finally escape to space. The part we see. Only 500 kilometers thick.

About 5840 K.</h3>

</UL>

</body>

</html>

===========

That code works just fine if I put the s3test.htm + circS10.mov quicktime movie files on the www2.bakersfieldcollege.edu webserver (or any other webserver), but it does not work if the files are on my local harddrive. Firefox works fine either way.

--

Nick Strobel

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Answer 3

andyBall_uk

Level 7

20,516 points

Nov 5, 2013 6:40 PM in response to Nicolas Strobel

Try using video instead of embed;

the above works locally here; you may not want controls

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Answer 4

Nov 8, 2013 7:45 AM in response to andyBall_uk

Okay, this works for Safari (thanks! 🙂) but not for Firefox. But I still have the question of why the <embed> code works if I put the webpage+movie on a webserver but not on my local/personal computer. What is the webserver providing to the quicktime plugin in Safari to make Safari happy?

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Answer 5

andyBall_uk

Level 7

20,516 points

Nov 8, 2013 8:09 AM in response to Nicolas Strobel

I presume that it's some security issue with local files.

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Answer 6

andyBall_uk

Level 7

20,516 points

Nov 8, 2013 8:31 AM in response to andyBall_uk

About the security content of Safari 3.2

WebKitCVE-ID: CVE-2008-4216Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.5, Windows XP or VistaImpact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to the disclosure of sensitive informationDescription: WebKit's plug-in interface does not block plug-ins from launching local URLs. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may allow a remote attacker to launch local files in Safari, which may lead to the disclosure of sensitive information. This update addresses the issue by restricting the types of URLs that may be launched via the plug-in interface. Credit to Billy Rios of Microsoft, and Nitesh Dhanjani of Ernst & Young for reporting this issue.

In which case, you might think that Safari - Develop - Disable Local File Restrictions would alter that - but it doesn't... at least not here on Safari 7.

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Answer 7

Nov 11, 2013 10:04 PM in response to Nicolas Strobel

Hey Nicolas, I'm running exactly the same system and having the same problem. I suspect as andyBall_uk suggests it is in fact a security issue with local files.

If I go into safari preferences, click on "security' tab, select "manage website settings", choose Quicktime from list on left, then toggle "Local documents" from "Allow" to" Run in Unsafe Mode", quicktime will now work in Safari when veiwing webpages stored on a local drive. However this does come with a prompt warning "Plug-ins running in unsafe mode can access your personal documents and data". Maybe not an issue if you're just running your own local test webpages, but sounds fairly intrusive/unsafe??

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Answer 8

andyBall_uk

Level 7

20,516 points

Nov 12, 2013 5:11 AM in response to thejayster

thejaysterThanks for showing where that is - I saw that 'Disable Local File Restrictions' didn't do anything, but didn't look at the plug-in security settings.

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