# Lil' help with Quicktime please?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lil-help-with-quicktime-please/176251>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 19, 2003, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lil-help-with-quicktime-please/176251 "2003-05-19T17:28:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![KidCharlemagne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ed8c4c/32.png) [@KidCharlemagne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KidCharlemagne)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2003, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lil-help-with-quicktime-please/176251/1 "2003-05-19T17:28:38Z")

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Whenever I click on a quicktime link in a web browser I get the quicktime placeholder and it never plays. I know I’ve downloaded quicktime. What’s up with this?

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**Author:** ![Number](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/number/32/242_2.png) [@Number](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Number)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2003, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lil-help-with-quicktime-please/176251/2 "2003-05-19T19:51:11Z")

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Try right-clicking the link and saving the file to your hard drive. Are you then able to open it?

You may have to reinstall Quicktime.

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**Author:** ![Troy\_McClure\_SF](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troy_mcclure_sf/32/4150_2.png) [@Troy\_McClure\_SF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Troy_McClure_SF)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2003, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lil-help-with-quicktime-please/176251/3 "2003-05-20T05:43:08Z")

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What OS/version?

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**Author:** ![Earthling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/90db22/32.png) [@Earthling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earthling)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2003, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lil-help-with-quicktime-please/176251/4 "2003-05-20T06:47:15Z")

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IIRC, during installation QuickTime will ask you about your browser so that it can install the proper plug-in module – but it may be automatic now in the most recent versions (actually, I _do_ have the latest version, but I wasn’t paying attention during its installation) – so yeah, you may need to re-install.

Anyway, I rooted around and these are the likely suspects:

- Start QuickTime \> Edit \> Preferences \> QuickTime Preferences
- In the drop-down menu, go to Browser Plug-in. Make sure “Play movies automatically” is checked.
- Under “File Type Associations,” at least have “Macintosh File Types” checked. I don’t know if QT will recognize .MOV files without this association or not, but it seems logical to have that enabled.
- Under “Streaming Proxy,” I have “Use System Settings” checked. You may need to set up a proxy server manually, though.
- Under “Streaming Transport,” I have UDP, RTSP Port 554, which may be the default – you can also click the Auto Configure button to have QT figure it out for you (don’t know how well that works in QT, though – I could never get Real Player to work that way).
- Under “Video Settings,” I have all options checked.

I think these options are the same for QT 5 and 6, so if you have an earlier version, you’d have to poke around a bit more. I have Win2K, but I don’t think that matters.

One last thing – I’ve noticed that QuickTime files are _extremely_ slow to download and play – that is, it takes much longer for a QT file to open than a file of the same size in another format, so your “it never plays” problem may be a manifestation of this rather than any problems on your end. One possible way to test it is to open the QT sample file (probably located in c:\program files\quicktime\sample.mov) with your browser & see if it plays or not.

Hope this helps.