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Apple has the worst customer care... (Quicktime Problemo)

M

mingspace

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 23, 2006
86
0
I love my new Mac, but Apple's customer service is the worst I've ever dealt with. I am a new Mac user and currently for some reason my Quicktime plays back mpg and avi files without audio, so I called up to try to resolve.

The first lady made me wait for 15 minutes after 10 minutes on hold while she researched it... The best thing she could come up with was to uninstall and reinstall it. She told me I have to uninstall and call back and she refused to wait 2 minutes on the phone with me while I do the installation after I waited for half an hour to get a solution from her. So I took down a case number, reinstalled, called back and waited another 15 minutes.

The second girl knew slightly more, but told me that when I uninstalled Quicktime, I also uninstalled that MPEG2 add on (that I purchased for $19.99 on the apple site) after waiting another 10 minutes while she researched and trying one thing that didnt work, she transferred me to the sales department to so they can resend me the download link again (my email doesnt allow me to redownload what I've purchased in any way and neither does my account online). The sales guy sounded like a pothead... Didnt know anything and transferred me to customer service. Customer service tells me the Quicktime issues are handled by people who do not use the phone. Even for simple things like download links. Those issues are strictly done by email, and to get this decoder, I have to wait 2 days just to hear back. So after all this time (and money for this service) I am sitting here researching this problem on the net...

What the hell? What a waste of time and energy. :mad:
 
Sorry to hear about that, :( normaly Apple is rated as being very good at customer service. But, it seems that even they can mess up, on what seems a simple task or question. If you have an Apple Store near by, you might want to go there first next time. You don't need to bring your machine (but it helps) that way you can tell them the problem and if they don't give you the correct info at first you can stay until it's fixed. They are useally my second place to go for all Apple related problems and questions. The first being here at Macrumors.com. You'd be supprised how fast some of these guys and gals can help. Again sorry to hear about your woes, and hope you resolve them soon. :)
 
Just to make sure, you did have all the necessary codecs installed?

Did you try playing them in VLC?
 
mingspace said:
I love my new Mac, but Apple's customer service is the worst I've ever dealt with. I am a new Mac user and currently for some reason my Quicktime plays back mpg and avi files without audio, so I called up to try to resolve.
Click to expand...
Quicktime doesn't natively support AVI files, I don't think. Try Perian, as it supports quite a number of third party codecs. You may also want to install Flip4Mac which handles WMV codecs up to version 8 or 9.
 
spicyapple said:
Quicktime doesn't natively support AVI files, I don't think. Try Perian, as it supports quite a number of third party codecs. You may also want to install Flip4Mac which handles WMV codecs up to version 8 or 9.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the replies guys. In terms of Perian, I am downloaded it but I can't figure out how to open it. Like I said, I'm a new mac user so please bare with me. I'll have a lot of stupid questions.
 
Now if I dig into any folder and try to open any file, it asks me which program I want to use.

screenshot1.jpg
 
Ok so I came back from the Apple store. Downloaded all the codecs in the world and it still didnt work! They were stumped!
Anyone here have similar situations where they found a fix?
 
mingspace said:
Ok so I came back from the Apple store. Downloaded all the codecs in the world and it still didnt work! They were stumped!
Anyone here have similar situations where they found a fix?
Click to expand...

More data, mister!

Computer model, OS version level (10.4.8?), Quicktime version, and a link to a file that plays without audio.
 
I'm surprised you aren't pissed that they treated you like a child and had you turn up the volume using the slider control on the quicktime player controls.

Otherwise, some sound codecs/video used by PC users don't work in Mac OS X -- so you will always get a blank video with sound or a video with no sound.

As mkrishnan said, having somebody here check out what codec was used may help.
 
mingspace said:
Now if I dig into any folder and try to open any file, it asks me which program I want to use.

screenshot1.jpg
Click to expand...

Did you read the instructions in the white area there? Drag the folder on the left into the folder on the right and that's it.
 
gekko513 said:
Did you read the instructions in the white area there? Drag the folder on the left into the folder on the right and that's it.
Click to expand...

yeah... The apple store guys helped me get this... but it still doesnt work. :eek:
 
Yakamoto said:
Sorry to hear about that, :( normaly Apple is rated as being very good at customer service. But, it seems that even they can mess up, on what seems a simple task or question. If you have an Apple Store near by, you might want to go there first next time. You don't need to bring your machine (but it helps) that way you can tell them the problem and if they don't give you the correct info at first you can stay until it's fixed. They are useally my second place to go for all Apple related problems and questions. The first being here at Macrumors.com. You'd be supprised how fast some of these guys and gals can help. Again sorry to hear about your woes, and hope you resolve them soon. :)
Click to expand...

Yeap, in fact if you buy Applecare, they will even personally come to your house next day and fix your machine on site! Something that Dell doesn't even offer!
 
mkrishnan said:
More data, mister!

Computer model, OS version level (10.4.8?), Quicktime version, and a link to a file that plays without audio.
Click to expand...


Macbook pro. OS X Tiger. Quicktime 7 Pro.
I dont have a link to the file. But no AVI's or MPGs will play on it with audio.
 
Hmm. Try this:

Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Audio Midi Setup

Make sure under Audio Output section the Format says "48000.0 Hz." If it doesn't, change it and try playing the files again.
 
Aurora said:
Hmm. Try this:

Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Audio Midi Setup

Make sure under Audio Output section the Format says "48000.0 Hz." If it doesn't, change it and try playing the files again.
Click to expand...

I did that. No dice.
 
My guess would be that you have one or more PPC codecs that are refusing to run on your Intel Mac. You seem to have installed a massive amount of Quicktime related stuff... when MPGs at least should have worked outside the box. I'm not sure how to undo it though... I would probably start with deleting everything you put in /library/quicktime that wasn't put there by QTPro or the Apple MPEG-2 extension.
 
My guess is that its something that isn't compatiable with QuickTime. Try VLC, and if that doesn't play it, nothing will on the Mac side. The problem is, every Tom, Dick, and Harry has their own different codec from this program or that program, and some of them are Windows codecs only. A lot of the time you'll get a generic set of codecs that will play other ones, but maybe only halfass (such as your problem, video with no sound).*

To give credit to any phone support person. Phone support is one of the hardest things in the world to do. You're blind to the world and someone calls in a problem and expects you to solve it when you can't see exactly whats happening. Also, he/she has no idea what you're clicking on, sometimes a person doesn't give the right information, or enough information to them which makes it hard to solve. So just because they didn't solve your problem, doesn't make them a terrible tech support company. Apple actually has the best tech support out there. As you probably noticed, you probably got someone from the US and not India like any other tech company. As far as I know, Apple doesn't have any tech support in India.
 
mingspace said:
it plays in VLC. I just need it to play in quicktime as well as final cut pro.
Click to expand...

If it plays in VLC, but not QuickTime then its probably a goofball codec and you'll probably have a hard time getting it to play. Once you get it to play in QuickTime, it should play in FCP.*
 
mklos said:
If it plays in VLC, but not QuickTime then its probably a goofball codec and you'll probably have a hard time getting it to play. Once you get it to play in QuickTime, it should play in FCP.*
Click to expand...

yes, thats why Im trying so hard to get it in quicktime, not VLP....
Nothing is working.
Here is a list of my downloads so far
Quicktime Pro 7
DivX
VLC
FLC
IMX
DVC
FCP Uncompressed
Quicktime MPEG2 add on
 
I haven't messed around with Quicktime much, but can you try and remove all the extras and go back to only Quicktime with no extra codecs. That should play most mpg files (not if they're mpeg2, though) just fine (probably not avi). If that works, you can start adding the extras one at a time and see when it starts going wrong.

If it doesn't work with Quicktime and only Quicktime, I think it's time for an archive and install.
 
gekko513 said:
I haven't messed around with Quicktime much, but can you try and remove all the extras and go back to only Quicktime with no extra codecs. That should play most mpg files (not if they're mpeg2, though) just fine (probably not avi). If that works, you can start adding the extras one at a time and see when it starts going wrong.

If it doesn't work with Quicktime and only Quicktime, I think it's time for an archive and install.
Click to expand...

Nope. Did that at the store.

Any other suggestions?
If not this may just be an unfixable issue with Quicktime on Intel based PC's
 
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