QuickTime & Windows Media Player Crashing
 

8600 Power Mac/ G3 Upgrade (Mach Speed)
280 MHz
OS 9.1
512 MB RAM
8 GB Hard Drive
Disk Cache set to 16384 K
Virtual Memory ON / RAM Disk off
Quicktime Player 6.0.3
Memory allocated to QT = 16384 K.

This Mac crashes within a minute or so playing long Quicktime movies, always has. Also happened on OS 8.6. It also happened with previous versions of QT. Seems OK with short movies (less than a minute) however. Mac also freezes playing movies on Windows Media Player 7 after a minute or so.

Erasing prefs hasn't helped.

Could be a conflict...
Extensions Set I'm using for QT (exts left on): (CP) = control panel
Mach Speed, Apple Audio, Apple CD/Dve Driver, Apple Guide, Apple Monitor Plugins, Built-In Graphics Accelerator, CarbonLib, Contextual Menu, Control Strip, Foreign File Access, All QuickTime Exts, Sound Manager, UDF Volume Access, Video Startup, Apple Menu Options (CP), File Exchange (CP), Macintosh Easy Open (CP), Apple Eney DLPI Support, Apple Photo Access, Audio CD Access, Find By Content, Folder Actions, ISO 9660 File Access, Open Transport, Open Transport ASLM Modules, Serial (Built-in), Shared Library Manager, Shared Library Manager PPC, SOMobjects for Mac OS, Text Encoding Converter, Windows Media Player.shib, AppleTalk (CP), Control Strip (CP), QuickTime Settings (CP), Startup Disk (CP), TCP/IP (CP)

Since it runs for about a minute before freezing, maybe the data flow is filling up the RAM? Maybe Mac is just too slow?

Thanks for any thoughts on this,
Soulfilet

How much Virtual Memory do you use? Some apps don't like VM!
Video playback requires a lot of resources. If your app is attempting to save & read from the scratch disk it could potentially be a problem with video. Try turning VM off & see if it makes a difference. You'll need to restart your comp for the change to take effect.

Keep in mind also that LW & Java for os9 & earlier were not especially memory efficient. Launching a video app whilst you're using VM & whilst LW is doing multiple things (such as writing to disk & using VM) could be where the issue is. Some apps also use their own VM.

You have an older mac. The older HDD's were quite slow although your's would be a scsi. Add VM to that & everything gets slower. Also the system bus a bit slow (half the speed of the 1st G4) as is everything else video card, ram, etc. LW will make it work hard but perhaps the video launching is just a bit more than it can cope with, at least with VM being used.

Tell us if it makes a difference turning VM off. ;)

Thanks for that suggestion. I have turned off VIRTUAL MEMORY, and Quicktime works about the same. I think you're right, it was slowing other things down.

Actually, it was at someone's suggestion that I tried running QT with VM on, and I guess there was no change.

My Mac is just plain old and slow. I don't think there is an extension conflict. QT movies freeze after 4 minutes or longer. So I pause it every 3.5 minutes, quit QT, then re-open the file and advance it to where I left off. Guess I won't be running iMovie on this machine.

I am running OS 9.2.2 now, which you recommended a while back, and it has been stable. QT seemed to run better after going from OS 8.6 to 9.1.

You mentioned possible problems launching QT while running LimeWire - I know I can't do that. LW crashes if I try to run any other program. Apparently it was an only child.

Unfortunately QT seems to be the only video program that works on this Mac. I'm wondering, might there be another video program that will work better than QT?

About time you updated to OSX. Yes it will use a bit more ram & perhaps be a bit lower. But it will have the most up to date apps & plug-ins. Also no crashing or freezing of the mac. OSX is supreme in managing ram in that it isolates any problems & blocks them out. So if an app (or even os9 classic) crashes, you can simply re-launch it without any need to restart the comp voluntarily or involuntarily.

Go to QT's Prefs & select plug-ins>MIME settings & tick all options. You could also try pple Video Player http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macos/437 (OS7-9)

You could also try allocating more ram to QT. ;)

Also see this: http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showth...8426#post98426

I was going to offer you a favour via pm or email but you've chosen not to receive either so I can't help you further. :confused: pm me if you change your mind! ;)

Yes, I already have cache set to max. That was a good article by Dante.

OSX on this old Mac? Hard to believe - this is not a true G3, it's upgraded with Mach Speed. So if I installed OSX, 9.2.2 classic is included, right?

My PM and email are on now - favour you say?

Someone here suggested VLC player - heard of it?