Jason to QuickTime & Firefox: You Suck (Bonus: CODEC Hell)

[Jason Dunn]

If there's one thing in the tech world that I dislike more than anything else, it's probably when an application completely, utterly, and totally misbehaves, doesn't do what it's supposed to do, and pits itself against the user. Case in point: I'm running QuickTime 7.0.4 on Windows XP Professional. I really dislike the QuickTime player, but there's some good content out there in QuickTime format, so I needed to have it installed. My first, and most major, frustration with it is that despite my best efforts, I cannot seem to get it to leave my browser alone when it comes to playing back certain file types. In short, after installing it all sorts of file types (MP3s being the most common) now play back inside my browser instead of an external application. You'd think that the settings found under <i>Edit > Preferences > QuickTime Preferences > Browser > MIME Settings</i> would be how you'd control this, right? The only MIME type I have checked off on that list is QuickTime Movie - I've checked it several times, yet MP3s continue to play back within my browser (Firefox). I've also checked the <i>File Types</i> tab and the only check box there is QuickTime Movie as well.<br /><br />After digging some more, I thought to myself "Hmm - even though I set the MIME type setting during the initial install, what if QuickTime doesn't pass those settings to Firefox properly?". So in Firefox's <i>Tools > Options > Download Options</i> I discovered the real source of the problem<!>: I never told Firefox to use QuickTime to open MP3s, that's exactly what it was doing. So Firefox gets my wag of the finger for this bad behaviour - it shouldn't make assumptions about what the user wants without asking, and it should respect whatever MIME settings QuickTime is passing to it during the install.<br /><br />It seems that QuickTime was also <i>designed</i> to behave illogically- when I'm in the QuickTime player, I see something labelled movie trailer, and I click on it, what do you think the average user would expect to happen? Why, for the movie trailer to start playing of course! QuickTime is set to auto-detect bandwidth for streaming quality, so the video should stream in a high-bandwidth format. What does it do instead? It opens up a browser window and starts looking for iTunes - as if it were a requirement for watching a friggin' video file! Ridiculous. I know Apple wants to extend their clutches as far as they can (hey, it's a business after all), but this type of arrogant application behaviour is insulting to the end user. And yes, Windows Media Player does something similar and it's always ticked me off, but it doesn't look for another application - it plays the video file, usually in a browser. What it should do, of course, is play the video file inside the video player.<br /><br />Why not use <a href="http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alternative.htm">QuickTime Alternative</a> you might be asking? Well, I did last year, and I ended up with some really funky stability problems in explorer.exe that were related to QuickTime DLLs - I don't want to go that route again. In fact, "codec hell" is one of the things I'm trying to avoid in 2006 - my digital video editing laptop is a complete disaster now because of all the codecs I've loaded on to it. I've had bizarre problems with Windows Media Player 10 - when I connect my Zen Vision:M to it and try to transcode DVR-MS files to WMV, it bombs out. Several other codec-related problems also occur on it, so I've become rather gun-shy about slapping those big "All in One" codec packs onto my PCs. It's far too easy for applications to break when the wrong codec, or even the wrong version of a codec, is loaded. Developers need to do more to make their applications resistant to freaky codec problems.<br /><br />Got any great "misbehavin' application" stories to share?

[Filip Norrgard]

Here are some misbehavin' programs I've seen:

Windows XP keeps DEP:ing when I click Start > Shut Down and I can't fix it. Thank god for Ctrl-Alt-Del (irony intended). :roll:

Rational Rose (before it was bought up by IBM) save an UML diagram (choose any type you want) close and re-open the same document. Now, nothing is where you left it, the class diagrams are messed up and sequence diagrams compacted to unreadable form. Yes, happy happy joy joy. *sigh* :x

Java by Sun (tm), sucks. The website and the program. For example, try to spot the difference between JRE SDK, J2SE JDK, JRE and J2SE. Not only that, Sun wants you to buy J2EE for big bucks when you are actually trying to download the frigging J2SE JDK SDK version 5.0-which-also-is-version-1.5 withouth Netbeans. And, yes, you had to use Google to find the download location, 'cause finding something on Sun's website is a billion times harder than finding a needle in a haystack. Really. :evil:


Now, since my blood pressure is probably near critical (after that Java incident), I need to cool down. So, here is some software that knows how to behave:

VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) can play almost anything multimedia, anywhere. Pure bliss. (If VLC can't play it, it isn't worth playing) :)

Skype (http://www.skype.com) recommended by grand-mothers and -fathers (http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2006/03/elderly_people_like_skype_in_a.html)in Finland... and me. :lol: It is simple enough for anyone to use, so I hope to see more programs like this.

Opera (http://www.opera.com). Simple and fast on (virtually) any platform, plus mouse guestures rock.

Mono (http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page) -- The open source version of the .Net framework works so much better than Java. Compile a program on Windows XP, transfer to Mac (with Mono installed) and run. Can't be simpler than that, can it?

[The Yaz]

Jason,

Quicktime may be coming up on the browser because it's that lastest audio/video program you installed. I had a similar problem with Quicktime/iTunes wanting to be the default for everything on my computer, even though I told them not to.

The problem went away when I reinstalled WMP10. I wanted to rip cd's to mp3 so the music could be loaded into the family iPods and my PocketPC. Once the WMP reinstall was complete, I noticed the problem did not pop up again.

While its still not an acceptable solution, it seems to be a simple one.

Steve 8)

[klinux]

I think Yaz hit it on the head. Every major media player from any major company wants to be your default player for everything audio and video rather than respecting the choices you have already made in your OS! Not to mention installing shortcuts all over the place, turn on advertisering defaults, etc. Urrrg.

My company is a major offender in this practice as well and I consider it slimy.

While iTunes is my default audio player, Media Player Classic and ffdshow are now my best friend.

Furthermore, I think since version 5 or whenever the music store was introduced, iTunes became bundled with Quicktime. One now cannot download iTunes without QT.

[klinux]

Oh, two thumbs up for VLC as well. Have it on both my XP and Mac. Had it on a Linux box for a while but why use Linux when you have a Mac. :)

[Doug Johnson]

QuickTime can be downloaded without iTunes... this helps the situation some.

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/standalone.html

I use Windows Media Player for all of my music files. It can be re-activated as the default (at least for IE) under Tools / Options / File Types. Just re-check the appropriate types. This has fixed my QuickTime woes.

[Jason Dunn]

The problem went away when I reinstalled WMP10. I wanted to rip cd's to mp3 so the music could be loaded into the family iPods and my PocketPC. Once the WMP reinstall was complete, I noticed the problem did not pop up again.

Here's an even easier way if it happens again: start up WMP, then to into TOOLS > OPTIONS > FILE TYPES then click SELECT ALL and click OK.

[klinux]

QuickTime can be downloaded without iTunes... this helps the situation some.

While's that is factually, correct, I have never claimed otherwise. My statement was that iTunes cannot be downloaded without Quicktime (since QT is responsible for FairPlay authentication).

[sojourner753]

Rational Rose (before it was bought up by IBM) save an UML diagram (choose any type you want) close and re-open the same document. Now, nothing is where you left it, the class diagrams are messed up and sequence diagrams compacted to unreadable form. Yes, happy happy joy joy. *sigh* :x



I've never been a fan of Rational Rose. Can you say BLOAT!.
Check out Enterprise Architect. It does just about everything better. Even the diagrams look better.

[FBL]

Many thanks for digging this information up for those of us who had no clue of where to even look.

And the informative replies following Jason's article contain solutions to other problems I've "STEPPED IN." This forum is quite a find.