Trouble installing Quicktime on Windows

[Tiemo]

Hi,
continiously customers of my product have trouble to install quicktime correctly on their windows systems (from XP to . The installer runs thru without errors, but starting my LC program afterwords, LC doesn't recognize QT as beeing installed and can't play my videos.
This is a real pain since years, especially because my customers complain that my software is garbage because they don't want to differentiate between QT and my software.
In the years I tried all usual tricks, like installing "as admin", switching off the antivir, rebooting, etc. etc. In most cases I succeeded in deinstalling QT and reinstalling QT up to 4-5 times. Sometimes with the same version, sometimes with different versions, but up to now I couldn't find any pattern, what at last lead to success.
I know, that QT is using the old multimedia API on windows and is running out of time and there won't be probably any update on QT anymore, but what would help me a lot for my customer satisfaction is:
1. What exactly is LC checking for when asking for qtversion? a file? a registry entry? This would perhaps help me to track down the problem
2. I can't beleive that I, resp. my customers are the only ones having trouble to install QT on windows, so what are your tricks to succeed in installing QT, so that LC likes it?
Thanks for sharing your experiences
Tiemo

[Tiemo]

I am pretty puzzled that I seem to be the only one, having these troubles.
Either I am indeed the only one, or it is so common for everbody that it's not worth to give your experiences or I am on the wrong lane.
Perhaps you can give me your experiences to this. Up to now, I do the test for the qtVersion at the start of the program and if it is empty, I cancel my program with a user message, because I tought, that QT isn't installed correctly. I never tried to go on with a empty qtVersion. So, is this approach still the "how to", or how do you check, if QT is installed correctly? The problem is, that I can't test this situation on my machines, because I never had such a corrupted QT installation with an empty qtVersion. Thats why I asked for what LC is checking for with qtVersion.
Thanks
Tiemo

[BvG]

i suggest you ask support about this.

[LCNeil]

Hi Tiemo,

We have had no other reports from our users regarding issues with installing Quicktime for media playback within LiveCode. This would suggest that the issue is inherent to customers computers whom are using your product.

I have spoken to one of our engine developers regarding the qtVersion function and they have came back with the following information-

"LiveCode uses the quicktime APIs to determine what version is installed.
This could imply that there is some discrepancy with the users quicktime install if it's reporting the version as 0

The function we call from the Quicktime API for this purpose is

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac ... nc/Gestalt

and the version number is requested via the following function-

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac ... imeVersion "

I hope this information gives you some leads.

Kind Regards,

Neil Roger

--
RunRev Support Team ~ http://www.runrev.com
--

[jacque]

I am pretty puzzled that I seem to be the only one, having these troubles.
Either I am indeed the only one, or it is so common for everbody that it's not worth to give your experiences or I am on the wrong lane.

I installed QT on a Win 7 machine about 2 weeks ago and it went fine. I did have to restart the machine after installation to make playback work. I also accepted the default file associations when QT asked if I wanted to do that.

[Tiemo]

Thanks Neil and Jacque for your answers.

If LC is calling a QT function and it doesn’t return the wanted value, perhaps the registration of a that QT dll fails and I could try to register it manually with regsvr32, if I knew which QT dll you are using. I couldn’t find it in your links. I experienced it a few times over the last decade, that a dll (from other products) wasn’t registered correctly and regsvr32 did it. – Just a shot into the dark.

If nobody else reported this issue over the last years it says to me, that either all other who have the same issue, don't bother runrev with this, because it's a QT issue, or on the other hand, it is indeed related to my product. But I can't see a relation to my product, because 99,x% of my customers don't experience this problem and everything runs smooth at them (god thanks!). The remaining 0,x% are nevertheless still a pain for me, having them on the phone and telling them that I can’t do anything, beside telling them to deinstall and reinstall 2,3,4,5 times, or returning my product. Perhaps something in their windows systems is incorrect or missing, but up to today I didn’t find a pattern.

Yes Jacque, in 99% the installation runs fine. I also never could reproduce the issue on my machines either, so I couldn’t create a workaround.

Thanks
Tiemo

[LCNeil]

Hi Tiemo,

Through trial and error I managed to track down the file that is responsible for returning the QuickTime version via the qtversion() function. This file is called "QuickTime.qts" and is, by default, located in the following directory-

C:\Program Files (x86)\QuickTime\QTSystem\

I was able to test this by first closing LiveCode, removing the ".qts" file from this directory, re-opening LiveCode and executing the qtversion function. This returned the value "0.0". When the file was replaced and LiveCode relaunched, the same function returned 7.7.4.

I also came across a registry entry that will also return "0.0" if altered. The registry entry is called "QTSysDir" and is located in the following registry location on my machine-

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Apple Computer, Inc.\QuickTime\

The value that should be in here should reflect the QTsystem directory that the Quticktime.qts is located in (C:\Program Files (x86)\QuickTime\QTSystem\)

I would check that the above files/reg entries are correct for any of your customers who experience QuickTime erros as discrepancies in these could be causing the issue.

Kind Regards,

Neil Roger

--
RunRev Support Team ~ http://www.runrev.com
--

[Tiemo]

Hi Neil,
thank you very much for taking care about this issue.
With the next customer having this problem I will check these files/regs
Tiemo