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."

Comments

Re:The answer is quite simple actually:

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet, don't use MacOS X.

Just as bad as microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet the apple fans cannot see it.

Re:Just as bad as microsoft

[Travoltus]

Perhaps they can't see it because Apple keeps deleting forum postings about it.

Re:Just as bad as microsoft

[DXMikey]

We see and Winboi's can be just as bad - or worse. Its just that on Slashdot we like to jump to the most negative conclusion based on absolutely no evidence and take up space with 500 entry threads until someone posts a follow-up story that clarifies the issue. And no one in said 500 entry thread will have gotten it right in the first place - you and I included.

Re:Just as bad as microsoft

[Serengeti]

If you're telling me that apple 'fanboys' are oblivious to their own problems, there must also be a term for what you are doing right now.

If you paid attention to any discussion about Leopard over the last few months, you'd see that there are a lot of Apple users (fans, even) that are unhappy with their Leopard experience. Well, so far anyways.

I don't think anyone who likes Apple would fight you on the argument that DRM is bad. Furthermore, that DRM is the cause of breaking legitimate programs is a pretty serious problem that only the most ignorant of Apple fanboys can dismiss.

And I don't think you'd argue me on the point that both sides of the table have ignorant schmucks on it.

Re:Just as bad as microsoft

[geminidomino]

If you paid attention to any discussion about Leopard over the last few months, you'd see that there are a lot of Apple users (fans, even) that are unhappy with their Leopard experience. Well, so far anyways. So the solution is that Windows (what Apples Marketroids call "PC") users who are unhappy with their experiences should get a Mac, but Apple users should be unhappy and continue to give Apple money.

I swear, the Pope must *wish* he was Steve Jobs.

Re:As always

[Shadow-isoHunt]

You miss the point. Updating quicktime should *not* break adobe.

Yay Apple

[Nursie]

Have there been enough examples of Apple bricking things, DRMing stuff and generally being total asshats for us to give up on the "Apple are enlightened, wonderful and friendly to techies" meme yet?

Apple make shiny things for fashion victims. Apple make good UIs. Apple seem to have a better security model than MS.

But it's time to admit that Apple are just as much coprporate MP/RI-AA whores as MS.

Re:Yay Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

To be honest they're not even that good. It's not as if MacOS and various Apple apps don't have their's fair share of security flaws. Prominently, Safari and iTunes have been fairly susceptible over the years. The only security benefits MacOS does have are the ones inherited from the underlying Unix architecture and certainly not from any innovation or competence in security at Apple.

Apple is a bad company all round, their hardware always has defaults from fire hazard magsafe adapters through to discolouring notebooks to easily scratched iPod screens to Safari on Windows being the buggiest piece of software released in the entire history of computing.

Their kit is appallingly expensive and feature lacking, and we keep being told it's the godlike interface that makes it so amazing, yet the iPhone is probably the most unusable phone in the in history of the universe for anyone wanting to send text messages (i.e. 99% of the population of Europe and Asia). MacOS is easy for things you're allowed to do but my god, just hope you don't need to do something like persistent static routes which is a mere one line command in Linux and Windows but has you hacking away at various startup scripts to do properly in MacOS. God at least most expensive manufacturers of items nowadays ensure their products are ethically produced to try and make you feel good about the purchase for some reason or another but it's not like you even get that with Apple's horrible non-green sweat shop produced crap.

There's really no reason to buy Apple kit, it's all round worse than standard PC kit bar one thing, it looks nice when it hasn't discoloured, scratched or died a cosmetic death to fingerprints on it's touch screen. That hardly seems a reasonable factor for purchasing something though unless you're a mindless fashion sheep.

Re:Yay Apple

[bkr1_2k]

Finally, someone who understands the good and the bad! I like Apple products, in general. I have used a Mac since OS X was released because I was tired of fighting firewire on my linux boxes. Over the last five years though, they have increasingly locked consumers out of functionality, starting most obviously with "breaking" (in my opinion) iTunes so it's basically just a useless front end for their store, which I don't really use. They make it difficult to burn bootable disks because it's a buried option under disk utility rather than an option in the standard disk burning utilities, and several other non-consumer friendly issues I've found.

I use Macs because they work more consistently and more cleanly, for me in general than a windows counterpart and i was just tired of using linux and getting almost what I wanted out of it.

For the most part Macs do "just work" and work well for most of the target market. What we all have to realize though is that Apple has a target market, and despite what they say it isn't the "power user", it's the teenage kids and the hipsters or the video/music editing market. With any company that has a target market like that, they're going to make decisions that aren't best for everyone, and generally are only best for the bottom line. They are no better and no worse than any other corporation, MS included. In the end, it's all about money for them. And honestly, it should be.

Could they still retain some good and try to buck the system, sure. In their own way, I'm sure they feel like they are, but all you have to do is look at google and see that after a certain point, it doesn't matter what your original intentions were, it's impossible to "do no evil" in all aspects of business. So Apple, like all other companies, make sacrifices. Usually those sacrifices come at our (the consumers) expense.

Re:Yay Apple

[bestinshow]

There's really no reason to buy Apple kit, it's all round worse than standard PC kit bar one thing

It works.

Face the facts, Apple buyers have the highest post-purchase and on-going satisfaction rates in the industry. For their hardware and their software. If it was how you said it was, they wouldn't, full stop. Of course they have their issues, and Apple do make some poor decisions sometimes (plastic in the MacBooks covering the vents). Expensive? Depends on your point of comparison.

A few discoloured iBooks, a couple of scratched iPod nano screens because of careless owners (ooh, sharp metal things can scratch?!), and you label their entire product line as if it all had that. My 1G nano was perfectly readable over 2 years after getting it, and it never had a protective case or that much care lavished on it.

A lot of people value appearance. A home computer shouldn't sully the room it is in, but if you live in a pizza box strewn basement I guess that wouldn't occur to you.

That's why we don't use Quicktime...

[DXMikey]

We use VLC. Now if the Handbrake folks would get a clue and realize that 0.9.1 fuxxors (I haven't got to use that one for a while) .mkv files and stop blaming it on QT or VLC we'd be happier.

Mac - best damn video editing platform in the world.

Seriously - Apple in my experience pulls posts when their veracity can't be verified. Lord knows they keep plenty of very negative postings on their forums when the bug or whatever issue it is, is a known issue.

I'd stay tuned on this one - Apple has no reason to screw up 3rd party video editors and I certainly wouldn't build a conspiracy theory that its to boost their Video Rentals.

I bet this one is fixed pretty soon. I'll ante $0.25 on the bet.

Re:As always

[Coopjust]

Because every video editor has a test system? Not everyone has a non-production machine or the time/resources to test every update. That's Apple's job. And while you can't expect Apple to test compatibility with every OS X app, After Effects is a pretty major video app.

Can't Leopard have Automatic Updating turned on?

What has this got to do with DRM?

[carou]

All the error message says is "You do not have permission to open this file" - you know, like file permissions, like chmod. It could just be that Quicktime has accidentally set the wrong flags on a temporary file.

There are a lot of people very quick to jump on the bandwagon, saying "DRM this" and "Defective By Design that" but I see nothing to suggest this has anything to do with DRM. Even less to suggest this was a deliberate move by Apple. (And even then, the headline "Disables Video Editing Apps" is sensationalist - only one application seems to be affected).

So what remains as fact: Apple have a introduced a bug in an update to a shared library - so what? It's hardly the first time this has happened, on any OS. And maybe not even that - perhaps it's even possible that QuickTime is correct, and the change has just exposed a latent bug in AfterEffects? We just don't have the data to make a judgment, so perhaps everyone could calm down and stop acting like Apple is chained to Hollywood and making the sky fall in.

Then Tell Apple to break it out..

[cybrthng]

More the reason to support my argument and then some. We have foreign nations struggling to file suit against MS because of the ties that WMP has into Windows yet your sitting here telling me "QT is more then a media player" that it ties into the subsystem of OSX and once its there, you can't do anything about it except re-install?

Poor design if you ask me and thats a hell of a lot more vendor lockin than what MS does.

I'm not defending MS either, just trying to understand wtf is going on. I was about to give OSX the light of day but it doesn't seem to be any more practical than upgrading to Vista.

Apple's finally done it

[DoofusOfDeath]

They took the two main selling points of a Mac: (1) "it just works", and (2) it being a great platform for creative work, and sacrificed *both* of those things on the altar of DRM.

I think they need to get back to "thinking different".

Re:As always

[hostyle]

Sue first, ask questions later! Living the dream!

Re:As always

[coats]

You don't understand software development, do you?... You can't test every possible edge case

I am an environmental modeling software engineer with more than 20 years experience. Let me tell you: You damned well should engineer clean interfaces that can be properly tested. If Apple had done so, this kind of problem would not have occurred. What we are seeing with Apple here (and with DRM in general) is hacking, not engineering.

fwiw.

Re:As always

[bkr1_2k]

I would say most of your comment was valid if Adobe and Apple hadn't been in bed together for a long time. After Effects is, in fact, on a large portion of Apple's core user base. The newer users (like myself) are less likely to have it, though some of us do. I know of at least 15 people that have legitimate copies of it and none of them are professional video editors.

The other part of your comment makes sense, but is simply an unrealistic expectation for 95% of end-users. Yes there are people who would know how to use a VM to test new software before upgrading, but the simple fact is, they shouldn't have to. Apple fucked up. Now they should own up to it and simply fix the problem.

Re:As always

[Anonymous Coward]

a) Why would you send the lawyers instead of getting a couple of engineers in your software group to talk to them first?
b) In what universe would Apple refuse to fix the problem?
c) In what court do you think Adobe have any right to sue Apple for making changes to it's own product?

Like the other poster said: sue first, ask questions later.

Re:As always

[Firehed]

Let's not forget that, at present time, there's no legal way to virtualize OS X in order to this exact type of testing. You can hack it together with an OSX86 install but that defeats the purpose anyways as you're no longer really replicating your original environment.

Re:The answer is quite simple actually:

[Constantine XVI]

Are you using either AfterEffects or Quicktime while getting a kick out of these replies?

Thought not. Shame, though.

Re:As always

[jandrese]

I bet Apple did engineer proper interfaces for Quicktime, but then a requirement for DRM came along (which is a technical nightmare when you think about it, it's encryption where the person entitled to the content is also the one who must be blocked from accessing it) and Apple was forced to hack up the interface to support it.

Just look at the penalty you pay for on Vista to get all of the DRM. It's insane.

Re:As always

[director_mr]

Seeing as a huge core Apple user base is video editors who use After Effects, saying that it was so "extremely complex to develop" Quicktime in such a way that it wouldn't break After Effects is just plain silly. QuickTime breaking a common application that drives Apple's bottom line on their high-end equipment is not an edge case. Yes, I know not to update software mid-project, but Apple should know better than this as well. Oh, and virtualizing you computer so that you can test software interactions on your apple computer in a video production environment is just silly. Thats more work than a simple install and if it doesn't work, roll your computer back to an earlier date. I'd love you to try to virtualize video editing. In a production environment, video editors don't have that kind of time.

Re:As always

[Altus]

your assuming Adobe was using the interfaces properly in the first place. Its quite possible to get away with using APIs incorrectly in one version of software and have it break in the next version.

Re:The answer is quite simple actually:

[kalirion]

Nah, just avoid Apple and Vista, and you'll be fine.

Re:As always

[nattt]

Quite frankly, not even Apple themselves know how to use Quicktime properly, never mind a 3rd party. It's a spaghetti mess in there, one of the worst APIs ever known to man. Apple have to re-write it from scratch to fix it, and the likelihood of that is as slim as the likelihood of more disasters like this happening is large.

Re:As always

[MachineShedFred]

True, but how many times should something not happen on a computer, yet it does?

I love how everyone is quick to smack Apple upside the chops on this - how do we know it wasn't Adobe that screwed up here by using the API incorrectly, and now they're getting bit on the ass?

Does this occur in other (non-Apple) apps that compress to QuickTime?

Please, before accusing others of fanboi-ism, be objective yourself. If Apple b0rked this, then they deserve the hit on the chin they're getting. If Adobe fucked up, then you're no better than the fanbois.

Re:It never ceases to amaze me

[MrHanky]

Well, you could just read the comment I replied to, for instance.

Re:As always

[gobbo]

Updating quicktime should *not* break adobe.

I agree with your "should not," but 15 years of pulling hair over Quicktime says reality wins. If you rely on QT to make money, e.g. video editing, your production machine is tied very closely to the version of the software you are running, and nearly every version of every app on your machine is determined by that, plus the main editing apps you rely on. It may mean that you are running a much older OS version than you want, or even older hardware. Anyone who relies on Digidesign to butter their bread knows exactly what I mean.

Upgrading Quicktime/OS/major apps often means upgrading other software, and in the ecology of file compatibilities, that means churn and sometimes disaster. Don't upgrade mid-project, we've learned the hard/expensive way. It's faster to avoid upgrade kerfuffle than to have a speedy machine that's broken.

It's especially hard if you're an independent media freelancer without multiple production machines. I work off of one main machine, and with many overlapping projects, some things can get pretty out of date. One of the less obvious blessings of running a Mac is that I can delay security updates etc. without too much stress.

Re:The answer is quite simple actually:

[BronsCon]

I was really looking forward to using some of my 4 remaining mod points in this discussion and I truly do despise Sony (and I'm not too big a fan of Apple, either) but I can't resist the urge to straighten out this one misconception...

because they are screwing sony... no.

because they are screwing sony's customers...

Which is not a good reason to like a company. One company who habitually screws over another company which you don't like; ok, you can like them. I may not like Sony and if I do buy a Sony product it's because I've done my research and it is the product which best suits me, but they're not the one being screwed here.

When a company screws the customer, even if the customer is not their customer, it is a reason to begin to dislike them, as well. Especially if you're a stockholder. When a company spends time figuring out how to screw over not their competition, but their competition's customers, they're not too far off from figuring out how to screw their own customers. Let's face it, that's what this is about.

Which is why I will never own an Apple product.

Unless I see some changes.

People, wake up. This is the same game the US Government plays; but I won't go too far off-topic and get into that in this thread. Maybe tomorrow.

Re:The answer is quite simple actually:

[Paradise Pete]

Which is why I will never own an Apple product.

You won't buy an Apple product and yet you're willing to buy from Sony?

Re:The answer is quite simple actually:

[BronsCon]

Yes. I just won't buy a CD or portable music player from them. I have a Sony alarm clock CD player that's in its 11th year of flawless service. I buy Sony batteries because I can get often them 2 for $1 and I've routinely had them last nearly (or more than) twice as long as Duracell or Energizer. I've got a Samsung video camera with a Sony CCD in it (very nice CCD, by the way) and now wish I had gotten the Sony cam, as Samsung used a shoddy interface to the CCD and the picture is intermittently very clear or very grainy depending on the mood of the camera; an issue that became known about this model, shortly after my warranty expired, which does not affect other cameras using the same CCD. I have a GSM phone with a 2MP Sony CCD in it, as well. The photos it takes surpass my Fuji 5.3MP in clarity. I'm looking into getting a Sony flat panel TV this year, as well.

Notice the types of products I'm talking about, here.

Wait a minute. Am I actually defending myself against a troll?

*repeats to himself* They're not real. They can't hurt you. You don't have to fight back. They're not real. They can't hurt you. You don't have to fight back. They're not real. They can't hurt you. You don't have to fight back.

Re:Informative? NOT

[Mister Whirly]

"Windows Media player is garbage in comparison across the board and still has the same type DRM."

You may have a point but, the WMP updates have never borked your Windows system to the point where you need to re-install the OS to get functionality that it broke working again. Funnily enough, "it just works".


Can you see the new Mac/PC commercial?

PC:"Hi. I'm a PC."
MAC:"Hi I'm a Mac I'm a Mac I'm a Mac I'm a Mac"
PC:"Gee Mac, looks like your video is stuck in a loop"
MAC:"I know. I installed an update to Quicktime and now I can't edit videos anymore!"

Re:Informative? NOT

[Mister Whirly]

"have any IE updates every borked your Windows system?"

No, I have never had any IE update remove basic functionality from the OS that the only remedy was re-installing the OS. IE can be rolled back to previous versions simply by uninstalling the updates. I have had updates from MS that have broken things before, sure - but never to the point where and entire re-installation of Windows was necessary, and that was my point.

Re:The answer is quite simple actually:

[Anonymous Coward]

This exactly why Apple is not an alternative to Windows. When OS suddenly locks you down and decided what you can or can not do, it does not belong to you anymore. Seems like the Linux is the only way to go if you want to have a control over your computer.

Re:As always

[Ohreally_factor]

a) Why would you send the lawyers instead of getting a couple of engineers in your software group to talk to them first?
b) In what universe would Apple refuse to fix the problem?
c) In what court do you think Adobe have any right to sue Apple for making changes to it's own product?

Like the other poster said: sue first, ask questions later. Welcome to the Slashdot Universe.

We hate lawyers unless we want to sue a company we hate. We don't need any cause beyond hating the company.

In our universe, Apple intentionally sabotages it's own OS components. It's a business strategy called 'Cutting off your head, arms, and legs to spite your face.'

In our universe, the 5 people that wanted Ogg Vorbis support in iPods are the equivalent to both Adobe and the entire film and video industry.

Re:Informative? NOT

[Mister Whirly]

You have a choice on the Microsoft updates also. You can either - automatically download and install the updates, download the updates and choose when/which ones to install, inform you that updates are available but do not download automatically, or do nothing. The choice is up to the user to set it the way they want it to work. There is no such thing as a MS update that automatically installs if you specifically tell it not to. So counter to your belief, there is a choice whether or not updates are automatically installed, and they user has control over that choice.

Apple is evil. News at 11.

[Jesus_666]

Seriously, is there anyone who's surprised at this? I own a MacBook Pro, but I don't have any illusions about Apple not being a bunch of scumbags. I mean, look at their rich tradition of suing rumor sites. Apple is evil, but they make good stuff. I might as well go and buy from another manufacturer, who is evil as well, but then I don't have a cleaner conscience and I don't get to use OS X.

Of course you can build your own computer, but you still support a good bunch of evil companies because someone needs to manufacture the parts you're building with. If you don't want to support evil corporations you need to abandon pretty much everything our society is about.

Yeah, our society is somewhat broken.

Re:Does this suprise anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Really? The only references to QuickTime I see in that changelog are one to a third-party codec suite, one to WYSIWYG color management, one to SDTV/HDTV color profiles, and one to an issue involving a specific corner case when rendering multiple frames simultaneously. What I can't find is any reference whatsoever to DRM permissions errors.

So, uh, could you please point me to the part of that document that you think refers to fixing DRM permissions errors in QuickTime 7.4? Because I've scoured through it at least three times in two different languages and I still can't find it.