Personal View site logo
Make sure to join PV on Telegram or Facebook! Perfect to keep up with community on your smartphone.
Please, support PV!
It allows to keep PV going, with more focus towards AI, but keeping be one of the few truly independent places.
QuickTime for Windows can be big threat
  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    The Department of Homeland Security has advised that PC owners uninstall Apple's QuickTime for Windows, after two vulnerabilities were discovered in its code. Because Apple is no longer updating the Windows version of the software, the DHS says "the only mitigation" is to remove the software entirely, or else risk "loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability of data, as well as damage to system resources or business assets."

  • 50 Replies sorted by
  • AzoAzo

    Thanks for the heads up Vitaliy. I have Windows 10 and installed it to see what the video looks like on the PC side. I have come to the conclusion that Quicktime is not very accurate on the Windows side or the Mac side. I wasn't aware of the problems with Quicktime until I started using DaVinci Resolve. Quicktime butchers the colors, saturation and gamma so good riddance Quicktime. VLC is my default player and now I have no problems with DaVinci Resolve.

  • EzzelinEzzelin

    So how do we use DaVinci Resolve if QuickTime is uninstalled?

  • LPowellLPowell

    Quicktime for Windows has long been an obnoxious crash hazard for video editing on Windows. From Windows 7 onward, Apple has demonstrated supreme intransigence in refusing to build a 64-bit Windows compatible version of Quicktime. As a result, the 32-bit Quicktime runtime module can allocate only 8MB of RAM and resorts to buggy virtual memory management to handle larger video files. This impacts every video editor that must use Quicktime to decode MOV files, notably Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects. It is Standard Operating Procedure to Ctrl-Alt-Del into Task Manager and terminate the QuickTime process anytime Premiere or AE lock up while scrubbing through a video. That fixes the hung user interface and you can save project or even continue editing without problems.

    I'd really like to see a class action suit against Apple, demanding they either commit to maintaining Quicktime on all compatible platforms, or else release it to the public domain as an Open Source project.

  • AzoAzo

    @Ezzelin

    Good point I forgot to point out that I am only using Windows 10 to preview videos and such. I was planning to switch over to a PC but @CFreak mentioned installing OSX on a PC and so that is exactly what I did. My Hackintosh screams with ElCapitan ;-) BruceX times went from 30 seconds to 12 seconds very happy indeed. Anyway back to Quicktime I am sorry about the confusion in regards to me uninstalling Quicktime in Windows... I think you are correct. I bounced back into Windows 10 and tried DaVinci Resolve first thing I noticed was a pop up error message stating some type of problem with Quicktime, next thing is DaVinci Resolve will not recognize any MOV files from my cameras.... Man that really blows for people that only have a windows machine. Seems like you are stuck with leaving Quicktime installed if you want to use DaVinci Resolve.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Any developer who uses Quicktime for Windows is real moron. It is buggy, slow, outdated and horrible.

  • bozfxbozfx

    This has huge implications for the film industry. Hollywood specifically is very quicktime/mac specific, but VFX vendors are not. Quicktime has been used for years as a go between, but if it's no longer safe to do so on the PC side, I wonder what the handoff will be. I know first hand (I'm a VFX artist), that quicktime is a REQUIRED install in order for Nuke to work with it. As noted by @Azo above it sounds like Resolve is affected, and I'm sure many other programs as well. Blackmagic, Alexa, Red, and many other cameras can record in ProRes. So there's going to be a huge shake up coming. My hope is a better, universal standard will emerge that works equally well on both platforms.

  • tonalttonalt

    Maybe this forces Blackmagic to fix DaVinci Resolve.

  • nomadnomad

    What about Avid? Don't they use it too?

  • LPowellLPowell

    Here's a link to Adobe's response to the DHS warning on Quicktime:

    https://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/quicktime-on-windows/

    In practice, Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects rely on Quicktime for Windows not only to provide cross-platform decoding of ProRes files, but to decode a variety of MOV files as well. IMO, the only way this quagmire can be resolved in the users' favor is a class action suit against Apple to release Quicktime to the public domain.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    IMO, the only way this quagmire can be resolved in the users' favor is a class action suit against Apple to release Quicktime to the public domain.

    Nope.

    Only proper way is to rewrite this parts to rely on proper Windows native ways.

  • nomadnomad

    +1 Apple is not interested in the professional video market at all any more. The 'new' macPro is overstyled, overpriced crap and they show no sign to fix that by a call-back (apart from silently replacing boards again and again if you bring those machines back). Do they think they can sell that if the block us from using QT on PCs? Sorry, but it's over, they are a telephone company now.

    I really liked working with Macs for years (I switched from PCs long ago) but I'm getting ready to switch again. The ProRes codec, even if widely adopted, is replaceable, as is the container.

  • caveportcaveport

    It's a potential risk, not an actual threat. Also only Quicktime 7, which is also ancient and no longer supported on Mac OSX. It's Quicktime PLAYER related problem, not a codec problem. I do think it's time for a platform independent professional media codec/container format. It's been a very long time since any computer/software companies like Apple and Microsoft have taken video production seriously. Maybe Blackmagic Design should invent one!

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    It's Quicktime PLAYER related problem, not a codec problem.

    Looking at Adobe response and such it is QT decoder problem.

  • spacewigspacewig

    Why not use Cineform? Same quality, lighter files and a SMPTE standard.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    QT is used to handle various video files in some software, not only Apple specific.

  • TronTron

    Every PC I own is on Windows 10. Looks like it's DNxHR/HD from now on, if clients want source/intermediate files they can download Avid's codec. I'm not paying 250% more for some low spec fashionista crap. Screw Apple and their lame Quicktime hostage crisis.

  • TronTron

    @spacewig Cineform is the least stable codec I've ever "tried" to use. In theory it sounds wonderful, but in practice it's been horrible. I've never been able to get it to run reliably on any OS or editor.

  • VVV1151VVV1151

    And Cineform stopped supporting.

  • LPowellLPowell

    @spacewig I tried using Cineform last year to encode 10-bit 422 intermediate files at 1080p. The Windows 7 version of Cineform corrupted the output files with geometric framing errors. I reported the errors to Cineform support at GoPro and received a prompt response from customer support. They were able to reproduce the errors, but unable to provide a fix. Too bad, at one point Cineform could've become a viable alternative to ProRes.

  • spacewigspacewig

    Really? Holyshit, I've been converting all my prores files to cineform to reduce size with zero loss or problems. I always export master files to cineform too as it is the same quality as the BMD ProRes HQ. I wasn't aware there was so many issues with it. I wonder why SMPTE has adopted it it as broadcast delivery standard if it is so problematic? Just to be clear, I use PC platform.

  • spacewigspacewig

    Other item I forgot to mention is how fast cineform encodes, much quicker than most other codecs I've tried.

  • balazerbalazer

    XAVC and XAVC S are my preferred formats. They are variants of h.264 in an MP4 or MXF container - that is, actual standards that are actually well supported in software.

    If I had an external recorder, I'd be recording in DNxHD and then transcoding that to XAVC-long.

    Just say no to Quicktime and ProRes. Quicktime for Windows has always had problems with decoding. It uses low precision and applies an improper gamma shift. Thanfully, MOV files can often be read natively without invoking Quicktime. And h.264 MOV files can be pretty easily transformed to something else like MP4 without recompressing.

    If you need to decode ProRes, ffmpeg will do it, though not necessarily in a single step, depending on what output format you want. ffmpeg can decode ProRes to uncompressed 10-bit, which you can then transform to whatever you want.

    Indeed, Cineform is a mess. It doesn't actually work, and is no longer supported. Too bad.

  • TronTron

    Apparently DNxHR is either 8 bit or 12 bit, no 10 bit option. 12 bit 4:2:2 (HQX) recording rates start around 666 Mbps. Not sure if the 12 bit HQX is supported on the new Blackmagic 4K Video Assist or just the lower 8 bit 4:2:2 flavors.

  • radikalfilmradikalfilm

    @balazer "Indeed, Cineform is a mess. It doesn't actually work". I would dispute that; I've mastered a film in it, and used it as intermediate/master in many other projects, both in .avi and .mov containers. Substantiate please.

  • balazerbalazer

    I've tried the Cineform codec in several different applications on Windows. For each of them it eventually crashed or stopped decoding. It was incredibly unreliable. I really like the concept of Cineform, and I spent a ton of time trying to get it to work.

Add a Comment