Perian 1.2.1 - latest version that runs on a PowerBook G3

[Dennis Nedry]

I have a very strange problem. I have 2 identical PowerBook G3 Pismos. 400 MHz, Mac OS X 10.4.11. Slow, sure, but they do pretty well with Safari and Firefox for general wi-fi web surfing. Perian is useful when watching Youtube -- Flash is too slow to play video in the browser, but downloading and playing the FLV in QuickTime Player usually works fine.

ONE of the PowerBooks runs Perian 1.2.3 just fine - I use it all the time to play FLV files. But on the other one, 1.2.3 and 1.2.2 do not work - I must use 1.2.1. When I download 1.2.3 on that one, it installs just fine and places the Perian.component into /Library/QuickTime/. All signs are good in the Preference Pane. Whenever I launch QuickTime, I get the following entry in the console exactly 200 times:

QuickTime Player[296] CFLog (21): dyld returns 2 when trying to load /Library/QuickTime/Perian.component/Contents/MacOS/Perian

Then each time that I attempt to open an FLV file (requires Perian), I get 2 more of those same entries in the console and an error message in QuickTime:

The movie could not be opened.
Mac OS error -50

I have repaired permissions and verified the hard drive in disk utility on this computer. I have also tried opening QuickTime and playing a known-good FLV file in the root account and it had the same console messages and errors.

Dyld returning 2 leads me to believe that my G3 Mac is not able to find a compatible PPC build, which is quite odd because on an identical computer, with identical processor and OS, it does not do this. There are no other known issues with this computer. I could wipe it and reinstall Mac OS X, and I bet that would fix it, but I want to give an opportunity for us to figure out what's going on and potentially fix a strange bug in Perian. This PowerBook consistently does not work with Perian 1.2.3 and does with 1.2.1.

[Dennis Nedry]

Are there any preference files or caches to suspect? This problem affects both the admin and the root account, so it's unlikely to be in /Users/. I will eventually try to solve this by systematically combining the hard drive contents of these 2 Macs onto a third drive so I can report what was wrong and maybe how to fix it if possible. But if anyone has any ideas to try first or a good starting point I'd appreciate it.

[gbooker]

Honestly, this issue is not related to Perian other than the fact that your dyld is having issues with that binary. You likely have a corrupt file located somewhere in your system.

[Dennis Nedry]

I'll try to figure it out and let you know what is causing it on that Mac. I'm starting by making a disk image of its hard drive (super slow process), then I can restore an extra hard drive from the image as many times as needed as I poke and prod at it and try it on different Macs, swap in the library folder form a v1.2.3 working Mac, narrow it down etc.

There is a chance that it is an unusual problem with Perian. That can't be ruled out yet. It is the only thing visibly affected and it broke on that computer in v1.2.2. If I figure this out and it's just a corrupt file, it would be useful to share and discuss what file got corrupted and why that affects only the latest version of Perian. I'll be working on this tonight and maybe tomorrow, I'll let you know what happens.

[Dennis Nedry]

This is going to have to wait until I can find my 6-pin to 6-pin firewire cable, there is no other acceptable way to make a bootable disk image of that HD.

[gbooker]

I believe that somewhere in the 1.2s we increased the number of libraries against which we link. Try running otool (-L I think) to see which libraries it uses (I'm not on a Mac ATM, so I can't run it here).

[Dennis Nedry]

I have made a very bad mistake. The working PowerBook G3 has Perian version 1.2.0 installed, not 1.2.3! I am very sorry for not double-checking this before my original post, I hate when people do stupid stuff like that!

When I install 1.2.3 on this Mac, it also has the same problem. These Macs were not cloned from each other at any point, they have completely separate installations that led up to 10.4.11 one way or another. This could be a G3-related issue somehow, not many people use G3s anymore so maybe that's why we haven't heard much about it.

[Dennis Nedry]

Update: I ran otool on version 1.2.1, 1.2.2, and 1.2.3 and noted all of the libraries that changed:

/System/Library/Frameworks/QuickTime.framework/Versions/A/QuickTime (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1327.73.0)

/System/Library/Frameworks/Foundation.framework/Versions/C/Foundation (compatibility version 300.0.0, current version 677.26.0)

/usr/lib/libbz2.1.0.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.5)

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Versions/A/CoreFoundation (compatibility version 150.0.0, current version 476.19.0)

/System/Library/Frameworks/AudioUnit.framework/Versions/A/AudioUnit (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)

AudioUnit.framework is the only new library since 1.2.1. I replaced all of these libraries directly from my 10.4.11 G4 Mac that works with 1.2.3, restarted the Mac, and there was no change. I installed Perian 1.2.0 back onto that Mac and it instantly came back to life without even having to restart or quit QuickTime Player.

I wish I had my FireWire cable, I would boot a G4 off of the PowerBook's HD, install Perian 1.2.3, and see what happens. Also the other way around - boot a PowerBook off of the G4's HD and see if 1.2.3 works. That would tell us if it's the G3 or if something is buggered on both PowerBook hard drives.

[Dennis Nedry]

I have successfully located my FireWire cable!

I have a Power Mac G4 with 10.4.11 that runs Perian 1.2.3. The first thing I did was attach this G4 to one of these Pismo laptops. I put the G4 in target disk mode and booted the Pismo off of the G4's hard drive. I attempted to open an FLV file and it gave the error. I rebooted the G4 normally from the same drive and attempted the exact same FLV file again and it worked fine.

There is definitely a problem with Perian 1.2.3 when run on a PowerBook G3 Pismo. I have not tested this on any other G3s.

I am happy to help you figure out this problem if there is anything that you would like me to try on this setup. I have a blue and white G3 that I can try in a couple of weeks.

G3s do not support AltiVec / Velocity Engine, that's the only difference between G3 and G4 that comes to mind.

[Dennis Nedry]

For anyone who finds this thread looking for a solution, currently the best way to play FLV files on these Macs is with Perian 1.2.0. Version 1.2.1 works but tends to drop audio half way through playback.

Perian 1.2.0 Download link:

http://perian.cachefly.net/Perian_1.2.dmg