Quicktime glitching out and bypassing system volume?

[Makosuke]

Just had a rather weird thing happen for the first time and I'm curious if anybody else has seen something like this:

Went to a Youtube video. I have flashblock on, so I got the h.264 version of it, which presumably is played through QuickTime. There was something wrong with the video, however; it showed up blank white instead of with a picture.

"Huh." I think and hit play. Really, really loud static-y, repeating, click-like sound comes out of speakers, scares the crap out of me. Thought at first I had the volume way up, but no--only about 1/4 level. Experimented a bit to find that with the sound completely off, no sound, but as soon as it hit a single notch on the volume meter full-volume glitchy static.

Everything else was fine, and when I reloaded the page the video loaded and played properly.

I don't care about the Youtube glitch--it's a non-standard, semi-hacked interface anyway. What I do want to know is if anybody has ever had an app bypass the system sound setting like that.

 

[BlueRevolution]

It may not be. The video is just that loud.

It's probably a codec incompatibility. Try downloading the video and playing it with VLC.

 

[Makosuke]

I don't think so, and no.

The codec was the standard h264 version supplied by YouTube on some videos for iPhone use, and I was getting it on a desktop via the feature to do so in FlashBlock (a tragically useful plugin, I must say). That reloading the page immediately got a working version showed that whatever happened, it was either a momentary glitch in QuickTime or on the other end causing a corrupt video to be sent. Certainly not a missing codec issue.

And I don't think so on the other because changing the volume up and down had no effect on its loudness--only on or off. I suppose it's possible that the volume was SO loud that it was maxing out the speaker drivers regardless of what the output setting is, but I was not aware that the levels on 16-bit audio were even capable of being set that high. Maybe I'm wrong about that, though. (I can say that on other forms of corrupt audio I've run into, they result in nasty static that can be very loud, but do respond to volume changes.)

 

[Makosuke]

Wanted to add a follow-up that I've now seen this happen three more times, one of which was on my MBP (also running 10.6.2), and once (unless I'm very mistaken) when using the HTML5 version of YouTube so FlashBlock didn't enter into it (though could, I suppose, still be the root cause). Scared the hell out of my wife.

This obviously isn't a widespread problem, or I'd have heard of it before, but it did occur on two different OS installs with no direct connection between them other than the same internet connection. I only needed to browse a few dozen videos before it happens, and calling it annoying is putting it mildly. Makes HTML5 YouTube totally useless, since even with the volume down to a whisper I can have horrifying noises without warning. I also did some experiments to identify that, so long as the glitchy window is open, nothing else will play sound of any sort. The moment that window is closed, the system is completely back to normal.

I may actually set up a video camera and see if I can replicate this as a demonstration, mostly to show that I'm not crazy. Also going to try and get some logs from when it's happening to see if there's any hint at what's going on.

Assuming it's a system bug and not something I've done/installed, it's one I'd REALLY like to see fixed ASAP.