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macOS Problems making screensavers in Quartz Composer

Sylon

Sylon

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Feb 26, 2012
2,032
80
Michigan/Ohio, USA
I'm trying to make a screensaver from a video I've made inside Quartz Composer. I've done it before, but I can't remember if that was before 10.8 or not. Anyway, now nothing is working. I've been using a tutorial that has worked for a long time. Could it be a ML problem? I am not good at programming or code, and Xcode is like Egyptian to me, I don't understand it. The process was simple enough for me to do, so its really frustrating that its not working now.

The problem is, the screensaver says: "You cannot use the _____ screen saver on this computer. Contact the developer of this screen saver for a newer version."

I don't know what the hell that is supposed to mean, I just made the damn thing. Can someone help me out here please?
 
chown33

chown33

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 9, 2009
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A sea of green
I googled cannot use the screen saver on this computer and found this:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#qa/qa1666/_index.html

IIRC, the requirement for screen-saver GC changed again in 10.8 Mtn Lion. I think it's now a requirement that screen-savers be GC-supported. Basically, it's the 3rd option, that isn't "unsupported" or "required".

I googled screen saver mountain lion garbage collection and found this:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1417509/

FWIW, googling the text of an error message is a long-standing approach for finding out what it means, and what possible remedies might be.
 
Sylon

Sylon

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Feb 26, 2012
2,032
80
Michigan/Ohio, USA
chown33 said:
I googled cannot use the screen saver on this computer and found this:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#qa/qa1666/_index.html

IIRC, the requirement for screen-saver GC changed again in 10.8 Mtn Lion. I think it's now a requirement that screen-savers be GC-supported. Basically, it's the 3rd option, that isn't "unsupported" or "required".

I googled screen saver mountain lion garbage collection and found this:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1417509/

FWIW, googling the text of an error message is a long-standing approach for finding out what it means, and what possible remedies might be.
Click to expand...


Yeah I found both of those pages already, but like I said, I'm not good with coding. I never had to deal with coding when I made my screensavers before. It was super simple in QC. Now, I don't have a clue what to do to make this video my screensaver. Its almost like Apple took the simplicity completely out of it.
 
danhoo

danhoo

macrumors newbie
Jul 17, 2011
22
0
Sylon said:
Yeah I found both of those pages already, but like I said, I'm not good with coding. I never had to deal with coding when I made my screensavers before. It was super simple in QC. Now, I don't have a clue what to do to make this video my screensaver. Its almost like Apple took the simplicity completely out of it.
Click to expand...

Is this only happening on 10.8? GC has to be set to "Required" for 10.8. However, since you're using QC, I'm not sure what to recommend. How do you wrap the QC in a .saver? You mentioned you're using a tutorial -- can you link to it?
 
Sylon

Sylon

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Feb 26, 2012
2,032
80
Michigan/Ohio, USA
danhoo said:
Is this only happening on 10.8? GC has to be set to "Required" for 10.8. However, since you're using QC, I'm not sure what to recommend. How do you wrap the QC in a .saver? You mentioned you're using a tutorial -- can you link to it?
Click to expand...


Here you go. It was super simple to do. I really didn't need to save it as a .saver file, Lion was able to read the .qtz files and use those without problems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dMMJY_hCA4

Keep this in mind, I made these screensavers back when I had 10.7 and the ones I made back then still work with 10.8, however new ones are not working at all.
 
danhoo

danhoo

macrumors newbie
Jul 17, 2011
22
0
Sylon said:
Here you go. It was super simple to do. I really didn't need to save it as a .saver file, Lion was able to read the .qtz files and use those without problems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dMMJY_hCA4

Keep this in mind, I made these screensavers back when I had 10.7 and the ones I made back then still work with 10.8, however new ones are not working at all.
Click to expand...

Sorry for not responding until now. Obviously I've done all my screensavers as .savers and haven't made one with QC (that video does make it look super easy).

Unfortunately, I don't have any great advice. My guess is that for whatever reason in ML, the screensaver wrapper process (that runs all screensavers and needs GC) isn't happy with the ML Quartz playback process, whatever that is. It doesn't seem like anything you can fix on your side, since the .qtz file is just a data file. Actually, the .qtz is apparently a binary plist, but I opened a sample one in the Property List Editor and didn't see any values that would have anything to do with GC (not that I really expected to).

You could possibly wrap the .qtz in a .saver using the Quartz framework (see http://kineme.net/forum/DevelopingCompositions/Turningaqtzintoasaverfile for some thoughts on this) but that will involve coding and that's probably exactly what you were trying to avoid. It might also be a bug that will get patched in a ML update.
 
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