G400 & QT 16bit

[Johan F]

Hi,

I have a G400 graphic card but I have come to the conclution that I must change.
The G400 have nice specifications but it can't run any Quicktime 16bit applications. I have some games (children games) that uses QT 16bit and if I want to be able to use them I have to change to another brand.

Matrox say that I have to use QT4 32bit.

I haven't found anything that will enable QT4 to be used instead of older versions.

The game developer say I have to change graphic card.

I have seen other people with the same problem.

Matrox is known to make fairly good drivers from the beginning but doesn't upgrade anything after that. They focus on new products so there will probably never be any QT 16bit support.

I have to use my old S3 Vision 968 PCI card while deciding what other card to buy.

Bye bye Matrox!

[Kruzin]

1st - Matrox can't be expected to keep writing for an old MACINTOSH codec forever.

2nd - There is a way to get it running. And the problem is with QT, NOT the Matrox drivers. ALL new cards using 32bit display drivers have the same problem with QT16 because of the way it hooks into the drivers.

But, I suppose since you said "Goodbye Matrox" you don't need to know how to get it working now...

[Kruzin]

OK....I've had my morning coffee now, and I'm in a slightly better mood

For those who DO want to know how to make QT work (although many of us already know this trick)...

Find QTW.ini in your windows folder.
open it.
Edit the line that reads:
Optimize=Driver
to:
Optimize=bmp

This will make QT stop hooking into the drivers in it's improper way, and let it work...

As I said, any card that uses 32bit display drivers will have this same problem. This is why G200s stopped playing QT when the drivers went from 4.xx to 5.xx. That was when they switched to full 32bit drivers. This situation is NOT unique to Matrox...

[Johan F]

QT is and was a popular codec for some game types. Games with QT 16bit is still sold.

If you wanted to keep the fix a secret it would only reflect the support from Matrox.

I have seen the fix you present at Apple but maby I did something wrong. I will try again.

The official information from Matrox is that it won't work and that I have to use QT4.

[Kruzin]

If you wanted to keep the fix a secret it would only reflect the support from Matrox.

We are not Matrox. We are MURC. Just a user group. Matrox has nothing to do with the operation of this site or forums.

If you tried this fix, and it did not work, then I have no other suggestions. All I can say is that I have run many childrens games on my kids PC, which has a G200 and uses the 32bit PD5.xx drivers. I do not know exactly what version of QT these programs use, but there is a pile of them that all work for me after applying this fix.

What title(s) in particular are giving you trouble?

[Wombat]

I bought somebody's MAX who gave up after not being able to run 16bit QT .mov's

And yes, it's Apple's fault.

[Haig]

This workaround was never a secret. You can find it in our FAQ's at http://www.matrox.com/mga/tech_supp/faq/0053.htm

Main reason why there is this problem is because QT16 is using 16bit dll's hooking onto the display drivers. They have been doing this all the time and the only reason why they got caught now is because most display drivers have switched to 32 bit code.

All of our drivers until 4.xx were 16 bit.

Same thing happens when using any other graphic card and their 32 bit display drivers.

It would be interesting to see what apple has to say about this

Haig

[Maggi]

I bet Apple would respond:

"Get QT 4 ..."

ROLF

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Cheers,
Maggi

Despite my nickname causing confusion, I am not female ...

[Johan F]

I got my games/QT-16bit to work now.

I think I looked at Matrox site a while ago for a solution but didn't find the FAQ then. Maby I just used their Search.

I have no prior experience with other 32bit graphic drivers, Matrox or G200.

I asked the ones that should know:
Matrox support and the game developer.
Both said there is no solution.

I tried a solution presented by Apple (the mentioned one) but must have done this close to bedtime. My fault.

I trusted Matrox support and the game developer and bacame angry with Matrox. I felt I had to spread my anger so I wrote a note here.

I'm still angry with Matrox support for not giving me a correct answer. I don't blame Matrox driver developers for this if it's impossible to have some kind of router for problems like this. I don't blame Apple because they can't write programs for future systems. It's just a normal MS-Windows problem.

I'm happy it finaly works bacause I selected a G400 in the first place and have no other reason to change.

And I see that I'm not the only one with 16bit/Apple problems.

Thank's

[Gurm]

ATI drivers support 16-bit QuickTime (says Gurm, playing devil's advocate...)!

Of course, ATI drivers also crash on 99% of known system configurations... so...

- Gurm

P.S. Technical explanation - ATI still includes 16-bit hooks for QuickTime, on purpose. This probably reduces stability overall, but it's ATI, so we expect that.

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.