Quicktime problems--"bad public movie atom" message

LaRock

I love to watch film trailers, and Quicktime is the program I normally use. I recently got a new Dell PC and every time I click on a Quicktime link I either get a "broken" image of the Quicktime logo, or I get a message saying something to the effect of "this file could not be played because it contained a bad public movie atom."

I have no idea how to fix this problem, and I am a relative novice when it comes to computer language. So please be gentle!

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me out.

Ivan

Frank_Duval

Hi,
Atoms are the pieces of QuickTime files that hold information.
A movie atom is one that holds movie information.
A public atom is one that is to be read by the player, and presented, as opposed to internal bookkeeping information.
Obviously, you had a bad public movie atom.
Seems like it simply got corrupted in transit. Try zipping it up or something and see if that fixes it.
If it says you have a bad public movie atom than try re-zipping it a few more times. If it still says that than I'm going to assume the problem is with the movie itself.

JChretien

Im sorry, but how will zipping fix a corrupted file? its like shoving a wool into a ziploc bag and expecting a scarf to come out. You're better off re-downloading whatever it was you were trying to open, and see if that helps.

LaRock

Thanks for the advice, but no luck. For example, I'm trying to see the trailer for 'The Fountain' on the Apple Movie Trailers site. No matter the size of the trailer, I can't open any of them without getting that message. Quicktime files I've downloaded play just fine, but ones I'm trying to open won't work at all.

Should I reinstall Quicktime? Any other ideas?

Thanks again!

BLuKnight

I had the same problem with a Red VS Blue film the beginning of this week. Some places have started to encode using the new Quicktime 7 engine. Jump over to apple.com and install the latest version of Quicktime and see if that fixes it.

LaRock

BLuKnight said:

I had the same problem with a Red VS Blue film the beginning of this week. Some places have started to encode using the new Quicktime 7 engine. Jump over to apple.com and install the latest version of Quicktime and see if that fixes it.

That's all it took...thanks!

targetmarket

I had thte problem and hope this solution helps some one else. I got the error about the public atom and saw to copy the file to another drive. That did not fix it. I aslo saw the comment to zip the file. If I unzip it back to my computer not the detachable drive it did not work. When I ziped it to the drive and then rezipped it to that same drive it worked. So there must be a data corruption that happens and the moving it and data manipulation must make it a "good atom"

Hope this helps. Why does a vendor have error codes and then not publish what they are and what they mean and what can be done about it?

Annes

This should be awesome :)

targetmarket

I wonder if I could bill apple for the time. It just seems that with search engines and all the technology out there the vendors could try and put out more information so you do not spend hours looking. I hope some of these posts help

Leo-Larkin

targetmarket said:

I wonder if I could bill apple for the time. It just seems that with search engines and all the technology out there the vendors could try and put out more information so you do not spend hours looking. I hope some of these posts help

What happened is apple has a new operating system "Lion" this will not run Final Cut Pro so anyone with FCP will not upgrade to Lion so apple send out a security update in this they plant a virus that renders all video files captured using solid state cards "compact flash" un readable by quicktime therefore final cut pro I was stung for £200 when I upgraded to snow leopard because guess what the version I was using was not compatible this is a similar situation they asked me to pay for someone to sort the problem for £85 no way not this time......

BuddyJ

Cool story bro.

TiberiusLazarus

3 internets to anyone that can translate that into a logical, coherrent message.

Kwitko

Leo Larkin said:

What happened is apple has a new operating system "Lion" this will not run Final Cut Pro so anyone with FCP will not upgrade to Lion so apple send out a security update in this they plant a virus that renders all video files captured using solid state cards "compact flash" un readable by quicktime therefore final cut pro I was stung for £200 when I upgraded to snow leopard because guess what the version I was using was not compatible this is a similar situation they asked me to pay for someone to sort the problem for £85 no way not this time......

wut?

Jokke

Leo Larkin said:

What happened is apple has a new operating system "Lion" this will not run Final Cut Pro so anyone with FCP will not upgrade to Lion so apple send out a security update in this they plant a virus that renders all video files captured using solid state cards "compact flash" un readable by quicktime therefore final cut pro I was stung for £200 when I upgraded to snow leopard because guess what the version I was using was not compatible this is a similar situation they asked me to pay for someone to sort the problem for £85 no way not this time......

WHAT did you call my mother?!

Pacifisto

TiberiusLazarus said:

3 internets to anyone that can translate that into a logical, coherrent message.

"Neither the shift button nor any punctuation keys work on my keyboard. Help me!"