MacOS – MP3s cause QuickTime to crash – how to reinstall QuickTime on Mountain Lion

macosmp3quicktime

QuickTime crashes whenever I try and play an MP3. It says 'QuickTime Player quit unexpectedly'.

This is for all MP3s. Ableton Live also refuses to load any MP3s, either because QuickTime is broken, or for the same reason that QuickTime won't work.

How do I reinstall QuickTime? I really don't want to have to reinstall Mac OS or upgrade to Mavericks.

Please don't just say 'use iTunes' or 'use VLC'. I want to get to the root of the problem so that I can get MP3s working again in Ableton, but I reckon the problem will be easier to sort if I start by fixing QuickTime.

I have a 2007 iMac 24" with 4GB RAM and it works perfectly for everything else.

Here's the first part of the error dump:

Process: QuickTime Player [5432]
Path: /Applications/QuickTime Player.app/Contents/MacOS/QuickTime Player
Identifier: com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX
Version: 10.2 (603.17)
Build Info: QuickTimePlayerX-603017000000000~5
Code Type: X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [244]
User ID: 501

Date/Time: 2014-05-14 14:49:01.397 +0100
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.8.5 (12F45)
Report Version: 10

Interval Since Last Report: 14517 sec
Crashes Since Last Report: 33
Per-App Interval Since Last Report: 55 sec
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report: 2
Anonymous UUID: F3543854-08AC-CD30-0E57-60991570096A

Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000000

VM Regions Near 0:
–>
__TEXT 0000000107b8f000-0000000107dec000 [ 2420K] r-x/rwx SM=COW /Applications/QuickTime Player.app/Contents/MacOS/QuickTime Player

Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x00007fff91090bb2 CFDictionaryGetValue + 18
1 com.apple.QTKit 0x00007fff8d91997a CopyLocalizedStringFromTable + 17
2 com.apple.QTKit 0x00007fff8d9197e6 QTTimeFormatterCreate + 682
3 com.apple.QTKit 0x00007fff8d920e86 -[QTHUDTimeFormatter _QTTimeFormatter] + 93
4 com.apple.QTKit 0x00007fff8d922979 -[QTHUDTimeFormatter stringFromTimeInterval:] + 133
5 com.apple.QTKit 0x00007fff8d922448 -[QTHUDTimeFormatter stringForObjectValue:] + 380
6 com.apple.AppKit 0x00007fff8fa521ad -[NSCell setFormatter:] + 221

Best Answer

I know you "don't want to reinstall OS X," but the easiest way to reinstall Quicktime (the current version, which is not a standalone download) is to reinstall Mountain Lion via Recovery Mode. Following the introduction of Lion, Quicktime became apart of the OS X installation package. There is no need to take a roundabout method. Reinstallation using recovery is non-destructive and only reinstalls OS X builtin applications and system components.

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