Older QT movie plays in Firefox but not Safari?

First of all, I can play all the test videos on your iTEST site except the last, which just produces a question mark inside the ‘Q’. However, I cannot play my own tests in Safari, even after clearing the cache. And, as you can play my iMovie tests in your Safari 5.1.10, it seems the problem now shifts to my Safari and perhaps its cache. It doesn’t matter if I cannot see it in Safari, still one doesn’t like unresolved problems in case there be problems within problems biding their time.

Normally the question mark indicates the error trapping has fallen through and troubleshooting is required. This is where I would usually ask about compression formats methods of playback but playback. However, we a long past that point. If it happens to me, I try refreshing the page first in case there was a timeout in the transmission/receipt of data. Sometimes this helps and sometimes it doesn't. (I had to do it a couple of time today. We had storms in the local ares and there did seem to bee some connection problems.)

Secondly, if I understand correctly, the movies still don’t play on IOS devices, except for the very latest v8.2.

All I have tested them on is IOS v8.2 devices. Will have to look around to try and find an older one... Okay found an old iPhone 4s using IOS v7.0.3. Had to wait for it to charge up enough to run some tests. Tested it on the alternative iTest site I've been playing with today. Not sure if this will cause problems for you or not. Have two different iTest projects published by two different apps (iWeb & Sandvox). Both use the same URL (http://itest.walker4.me/) but I only have one active at a time. You may have to clear your browser cache since the previous URL I posted was pointed one folder deeper in the sub-domain and I decided to get rid of that extra level. Use the current URL given above. Failing to clear the cache may try to use the older URL references with an extra "iTest" added to the end of the above URL.

In any case, when I tested the iPhone 4s under IOS 7.0.3, all files except the last one played. The last file was exported using a High Profile Level 4.1 encode. I have been switching to it for my iTunes video content to save space. Unfortunately, the older IOS didn't seem to like the vide but did play the audio. Since I can't record an IOS 7 iPhone screen, I recorded playback of a portion of all files on the current iTest web site so you could see how they play. Had to refresh the last video screen to get it to play. As a result, recommend you limit your slideshow movies to Main Profile, Level 3. Luckily, I believe this is what both iPhoto and iMovie will export by default for your projects—at least any that will fit within the default iWeb 700 pixel project width for content display. Site on iPhone 5s

Thirdly, all the same, it seems worth recreating the movies in iMovie as it's more widely accessible - eg you can view them in Snow Leopard but not the existing iPhoto ones.

Frankly, I really liked the slideshow title you used in your iMovie project. Saw no real playback problems with the M4V file produced. Problem with iPhoto 11 is that it has two forms of exports. A slideshow is basically a series of images displayed sequentially. QT 7 Pro calls this an "image sequence." Each image constitutes a single frame have a user defined display duration. iPhoto went a step further an creates 4 sequence tracks—two on layer 1 and two on layer 0. Three of the tracks have image sequences while the fourth is a black (or other) colored background. Images are place in different "frames" along the time axis and interleaving these images and layers, a crossfade effect it created. Unfortunately, such files are becoming less universal and some player software may refuse to play them. To further confuse matters, iPhoto 11 calls the export of slideshow content a "Quicktime" export and calls the export of H.264/AAC video content a "Slideshow" export.

So, if you decide to export any slideshows directly from iPhoto 11, use the "Slideshow" tab in the "File > Export" Menu window. You can use either one of the device presets or you can use the "Custom Export" button to use custom encode settings it you are comfortable doing this. Unfortunately, the latest software version no longer supports such customized export settings which is driving me wild.

And the last thing, which has arisen at this time but may be unrelated, is the warning that my start up disk is nearly full. Am I right to feel worried about this? (It seems curious it should occur just a few seconds after the iWeb warning about the size of the m4v file, though that was only 113MB.)

This is probably a matter of some concern depending on the situation. I would normally recommend a scanning of the system to both check that the drive is not going bad, all or most of the "available" space can actually be written to, and to determine if you are accumulating clutter like improperly terminated video recording, app trash not sent to the system trash can (e.g., iPhoto trash must be emptied independently from the system trash unless you use a utility that takes care of both. In addition, things like the amount of available RAM, number apps open simultaneously, HD cache allotments to various applications, etc. For instance, If I am going to work on a 30 GB Blu-ray file, I normally want to have about 90 GBs available as a "workspace." My RAID unit starts giving me warnings when it goes below 15% availability. (On my 36 TB RAID unit having 26.65 TBs of protected space, this means I start getting warning when the available space drops a little below 4 TBs. So you see, there may be many possible contributing factors here to be examined. At the very least you may want to verity your hard drive check disk permissions. If you have more serious utilities available you may want to rebuild your directories and perform general diagnostics.

Since you are unfamiliar with most of the things I asked about, it is unlikely that you are doing things that might cause problems in these areas. In a similar way, I am sure you would know if you frequently force applications to quit in the middle of your projects or if you were plagued with power outages while writing large files to your hard drive.

PS - Just tried to open iWeb and got this message:

“Can’t open file “~/Library/Application Support/iWeb/Domain.sites2.”

The SITES2 file is where iWeb stores your project descriptions. The question now becomes, is the SIteS2 file itself damaged or is something else preventing the file from opening—e.g., a PLIST file. If the SITES2 file is bad and you can't recover an earlier version of it and the iWeb app itself is undamaged, then you could simply remove the file from the designated folder and iWeb should then open as if for the first time. If you are running Time Machine and can recover an earlier version of the file, then I would try replacing the file that won't open and see if iWeb will then open. If that doesn't work, then I might try returning the original SITES2 file but remove the iWeb PLIST file to see if iWeb would then open correctly. Not a real iWeb guru, but these are the first things that come to mind.

- I can open iWeb again thanks, after replacing the existing domain.. with a recently saved one. Do you think it’s possible the JW1 or JW2 video may have caused the problem?

No, not under normal circumstances. It may be more likely that the file was corrupted during the last previous close or save operation. Files frequently read or write some bit or data incorrectly. Normally it is caught. When it isn't, you have a problem. Just a few days ago, someone on the forum had his QT X player malfunction. Normally, this might require a complete reinstall of the OS since Yosemite won't let you delete this player. Luckily, this individual was able copy and replace the player "package" contents from another system which included the corrupted file preventing his from opening the player—i.e., the same solution you used.

- And unlikely as it seems, is there any way they could be implicated in the 'startup disk nearly full' message?

I wouldn't think so. I currently have about 15 active and inactive site projects listed in the main iWeb window and they total only 7.49 GBs for the SITES2 file. Things like starting a screen recording and leaving it running would be more likely to cause such problems.

I do copy large amounts of wav music files (about an hour’s recording) each week to my external HD from a portable recorder and then delete them into Finder trash. Might that create a load of invisible files that aren’t cleared in routine maintenance?

WAV is a file container commonly used to storing PCM data. Uncompressed PCM audio would likely have data rates roughly equal to H.264/AAC SD video files. CD quality WAV PCM is frequently described as requiring about 10 MBs per minute. These files would be considered relatively small compared with DV files or Blu-ray content. The real question here is what does "delete them into Finder trash" mean here? Files simply placed in the trash are not really deleted until you actually empty the trash container. The same is true for photos "deleted" in iPhoto. The files remain in the iPhoto trash container until the container is actually emptied. While these files would not be "invisible," they are nor cleared by the built-in maintenance routines. There are files (e.g., ".ds") that are normally invisible, there are other files stored to "hard to reach/see" locations, and there are "temporary" files that are created by the system for intermediate purposes which are normally deleted after use unless the something like a system crash, power outage, or "forced quite" prevents/interrupts removal. In addition, bad sectors on a volume can be marked as non-usable/writable which is why I mentioned the running of media verification software, as well as, ensuring that directory data is correct.

- And I wonder if you have any thoughts on why I can’t see my videos on Safari, when I can see them fine in Safari on your site?

The Photo-JPEG/MP3 "slideshow" MOV files were not viewable one either you or my Snow Leopard systems so I am assuming this was either a security update or something similar change to how the files are handled by the browser since Apple is no longer supporting the latest changes in which iWeb may need to code the embedding or referencing of the media content. Photo-JEPEG is, after all, is a legacy format while the H.264/AAC the current, general purpose AV compression format for "modern" distribution by Mac systems. As to the H.264/AAC files on your web site, there could be some sort of configuration, security, connection, or hosting issue for your system or ISP which might not affect me. Are you or anyone else you know able to run any comparison-contrast tests to isolate a particular issue? This really isn't my forte. I'm more into the custom compression of media in support of my personal iTunes managed AV library, as well as, currently being tasked with the upkeep and maintenance of a personal WDMyCloud device shared by the entire family residing in different states. (We use it to share photo and video content mostly and I've been posting public domain Gutenberg sourced ebooks and Librivox sourced audiobooks for grandchildren, nieces, and grandnieces in recent weeks.)