Slashdot Mirror
Apple QuickTime DRM Disables Video Editing Apps
An anonymous reader writes "According to numerous posts on Apple's discussion forums (several threads of which have been deleted by Apple), as well as a number of popular video editing blogs, Apple's recent QT 7.4 update does more than just enable iTunes video rentals — it also disables Adobe's professional After Effects video editing software. Attempting to render video files after the update results in a DRM permissions error. Unfortunately, it is not possible to roll back to a previous version of QT without doing a full OSX reinstall. Previous QT updates have also been known to have severe issues with pro video editing apps."
Don't use Quicktime.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Never upgrade a production box without first upgrading on a test system. And NEVER NEVER upgrade mid project. If you're an individual and not a post production facility, test the upgrade on a separate partition or physical volume.
Or wait until everyone else gets the kinks worked out.
This is all common sense, and it's really not that hard. But you'd be surprised at the number of otherwise intelligent people that do stupid shit like upgrading a key component in the middle of a project. And if you absolutely must, do it on a cloned volume with backed up data.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Quicktime is in fact Mac OS's Audio and Video subsystem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicktime#QuickTime_framework
It's much more likely that updates to the underlying API are what's breaking After Effects etc, than updates to the media player bit.
The article states this is in QT 7.4. My computer just popped up with the 7.6 update. Does anyone care to investigate why the two quick updates, or should we just leave this paranoid story on here because it's cool to rip on Apple?
Apple is notorious for stuff like this. They have all sorts of shared components (like QuickTime, FxPlug, etc) that they update independently from each other. I develop for Final Cut Pro and Motion, and the last time I installed a beta for them, they installed a component which broke QuickTime. Now I can't launch the QuickTime player, iTunes, iMovie, or any other app that relies on certain QuickTime codecs, without them crashing immediately. Recent updates to QuickTime haven't fixed the problem either. And of course you can't uninstall anything without reinstalling the OS. Look around - there are plenty of people asking for the "Quicktime deinstaller" which does exist but has its own problems.
Between stuff like this and having to essentially port my code every time they release a new version of OS X, and the constant switching between processor architectures, APIs, UI design requirements, etc. all I can say is it REALLY sucks being a Mac developer.
Full discussion on http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1342677&start=30&tstart=0, which makes the summary quite lame. The fact that subtitles also broke with QT 7.4 does say something though..
Actually. Yes you can. It's not as simple as a quick "Roll Back this install" but by no means is it as impossible to revert as some programs in XP.
Step 1: Download 7.3.1 for what ever version of OSX you're using. http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/
Step 2: Copy the installer package to the desktop.
Step 3: Right click and "Show Package Contents", open "Contents"
Step 4: Open "QuickTime_Leopard.dist" in a text editor (Not sure what it is called in other versions.
Step 5: Scroll down to "newerQuickTimePresent()" (All Apple pre and postflight scripts are just that, scripts. You can write them in bash, perl, ruby, python, php, etc.)
Step 6: Change "return false" to "return true". Or Comment it out, etc
Step 7: Install.
Quicktime is Apple's underlying media subsystem. It's not bolted on. The Quicktime Player is bolted on to wrap the functions and play videos. The Quicktime Pro program that they sell enables editing. There is no lock-in, because anyone can provide a media layer, and anyone can access Quicktime. Even Realbasic Apps can bundle Quicktime and do whatever they want. You could write your own media player with it's own DRM and send content to Quicktime (although hackers would grab the unencrypted layer inside of Quicktime).
There should be a way to roll-back the Quicktime update, because the Package should limit changes to the Quicktime Framework and Quicktime Player apps, but I don't know that there isn't Quicktime code everywhere. It should still exist, but it's not a media player, and it's not vendor lockin.
MS gets nailed for Vendor lock-in for bundling not core programs and not letting them be removed. On a Mac, if I don't want Safari, Quicktime Player, iTunes, etc., I just drag the Application to the trash and I never see it again. I still have the underlying OS Components of WebKit (I think that it's an OS Level Framework now) and Quicktime, but I don't have the applications. Microsoft REFUSED to allow the deletion of IE/WMP, and when forced by the courts to provide a version without them, removed the underlying OS components to break Windows.
That's why MS's bundling behavior was problematic, and Apples not so much. Apple lets you remove applications you want without hosing the OS. MS refused to let you remove the application without removing the OS Components, and you NEED media capability even if you don't want WMP, and you NEED the HTML component, because many applications use it once you make it a standard OS Component.
Just to clarify: It's not the quicktime player that is the issue, it's the quicktime subsystem that is integral to AfterEffects and other pro video applications. Substituting VLC will not solve this. The issue really is much more serious. Bad fuck up on Apple's part. However, I don't think this is really going to bother most video professionals, because they will have waited to upgrade (to see what potential problems might crop up), or they're testing on non-production boxes.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
You're missing the point. There's this thing called the Quicktime Player. That's not at issue here.
What is at issue is this other thing called Quicktime. It's a technology that provides video services for OS X and applications. Applications such as AfterEffects, Final Cut Pro, etc. and iTunes. A change in this subsystem to support a new feature in iTunes has fucked up support for AfterEffects. Apple fucked up, no doubt about it. But the sky isn't falling and this is not even comparable to MS embedding a browser in their OS to kill Netscape. Not even close.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Okay, 60 seconds reading the referenced link in the articles would show that it is NOT a permissions problem that can be fixed with CHMOD. The files in question will open fine with the iTunes player but not with QT.
I see the Apple happy moderators choose the more convenient and not the real "insightful" route of modding you up in defense of Apple instead of actually reading about the problem. Moderator thinking, "Oh this person must be right, there is no way Apple could have messed this up."
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1342677&start=30&tstart=0
But Apple doesn't always remove negative posts. Here is a huge thread on some major bugs in their Airport Extreme Base Station, with over 20,000 views and 300+ replies. It has been around for a few months now.
People like to jump on Apple for removing posts, however their forum has some pretty clear rules on what is considered acceptable and what isn't. Usually deleted threads/posts are done so for a reason. If that person, or another, re-wrote the post to follow the guidelines it would very likely stay. Yes, Apple's moderators are a bit more - zealous - than on other forums, but they are not some weird underground conspiracy group, they are just trying to keep the forums focused and friendly.
Shawn's Tech Articles
I learned this lesson well in 2005 when I gleefully preordered and upgraded to Tiger only to find out that After Effects 5's non-standard use of Quicktime APIs resulted in highly unstable audio with the new version of QT that came with the OS. Just scrubbing video back and forth inside the app would produce Quicktime errors, and the only way to get a complete render was to render without audio and add the soundtrack in afterward.
I don't trust Adobe or Apple to be in sync on this stuff.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
Looks like most of the issues are fixed by this released today. http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/aftereffects/Adobe_After_Effects_CS3_8_0_2_Read_Me.pdf
There is a straight forward way to downgrade without OS reinstall. Google "downgrade quicktime 7.4 to 7.3" and you will find the instructions. It is not too difficult. You need the installer file and Pacifist. Not the most elegant solution, but which quicker than OS reinstall. This might be in other comments as well, so sorry if this is repetitive. Despite the uproar, I really wonder what the impact is? During the period when Abobe was not updating video apps for the Mac, we switched to Combustion and Motion for our motion graphics work. When Adobe came back to the market and our CS3 suite came with the video apps, we installed them, but no one in my shop uses them anymore. If you want to gripe, the recent FCP upgrade that changed file formats so projects were not backwards compatible was a much bigger headache, and it was one line buried in the changes document, whereas it should have been a prominent point at the top, and I would have heartily endorsed the use of the blink tag for this. One other question, the summary states that video apps are involved, but AE is the only one I have heard about, which other applications are affected?
Some people have very short memories.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Sorry for replying to my own post, but I've since found out that this patch does not correct the QuickTime bug, making my parent post invalid.
Looks more like an Apple screw-up than anything else right now.