Hi Yuma and Sarah, I haven't personally run into this problem with QTKitServer, but I did some searching on the Apple Support Discussion forums, and came across a thread titled "QTKitServer hogging CPU". Most of the cases where this process starts running and hogging your CPU can be traced to a corrupt or incompletely downloaded video file. The QTKitServer process only appears when you select files with a non-native Quicktime Codec in Finder, or play one of these files in Quicktime player. That means, it's not associated with files that have extensions like .mp4 or .mov (unless you have been trying to generate such files from problematic video files), but file types like .wmv, .avi, .divx, etc. may cause this to launch. QTKitServer streams data from QuickTime X to QuickTime 7 either because the codec for the movie isn't directly supported in QT X, or because the action (most filtering, transcoding, and editing functions) aren't supported under QT X. The process will disappear (if the file was not problematic) when you close the Finder window or when you close the file in Quicktime player. The original poster of the thread discussion I found traced his problems to a corrupt .AVI file that he had downloaded. In his case, on a brand-new MacBook Pro, selecting this file in Finder immediately caused QTKitServer to make his CPU activity to spike, and even when he closed the Finder window the process remained active and hogged the CPU. He realized that this file was problematic when playing the file in VLC threw up error messages, and some experimenting showed that whenever this file was selected in Finder he got this behavior. The reason it's associated with Finder, is that Finder attempts to generate preview images for QuickLook from the files. This may also happen for files in certain locations (e.g., one user conjectured that when problematic video files were located in either the Downloads or Documents folder in his Dock, the QTKitServer would launch to try to generate preview images from the files for Finder; since that process might be unsuccessful, either because these were partial files (e.g., incomplete torrent downloads), or corrupted files. One user claimed that moving the problem files to a different folder location solved the busy problems. (I think this must assume that he doesn't afterwards specifically select any of these files in FInder). Another user, who also didn't want to delete any files, handled this by opening Terminal, and typing in the commands: killall STOP quicklookd killall STOP QTKitServer
This seems a bit of overkill, since this means that QuickLook and QTKitServer processes are stopped until the next time your restart your session, and you can't use QuickLook to sample any other files that aren't generating these preview image problems -- that is, you also can't QuickLook PDF attachments or music files if you want to just play samples without opening iTunes, and you can't use QTKitServer to play non-problematic files. I don't use torrents or do substantial video downloading, but if I were trying to fix this for FInder, and I didn't want to try to track down the problem files, I might try selecting a group of video media files on your media drive (e.g, hold down the shift key and select multiple files), then Control-click (where this means pressing the Control key and clicking your trackpad or mouse), and arrow down to "Show View Options" on the menu. (You should also be able to get to this option by pressing "l a" for "Labels" and arrowing up once.) Press return, and on the next menu, VO-Down arrow to the checkbox for "Show Icon Preview" and try unchecking it with VO-Space. I can't check this out, because I don't have any problem files to test this on, but this might work. It would probably be better if you could identify the problem files, but in case there are too many to check, provided your system doesn't come to a stop, you could try selecting multiple files and doing the uncheck of showing the icon preview for these all at once. If things get really bad, try stopping QTKitServer from Terminal with a kill command, then go and select the media files in Finder, and go through the process of trying to uncheck the "Show Icon Preview" checkboxes en masse. Then restart and see whether the problem has gone away. The restart should also restart QTKitServer, except it may no longer be automatically started up if the problem is the generation of preview icons from corrupt or incompletely downloaded video files. Note that I don't know how this will affect your ability to QuickLook these files with VoiceOver, since tag information about the artist and work is usually also written into the preview information, I think. Just some thoughts for you to experiment with. HTH. Cheers, Esther On Jan 10, 2011, at 20:47, Sarah Alawami wrote: > Quicklook helper runs at about 120 percent for me some of the time and I have > to kill it. I don't knwo what the kit thing does though. Sorry. > On Jan 10, 2011, at 6:39 PM, Yuma Decaux wrote: > >> Hi List, >> >> I've been a bit jostled by this process. My macbook was fanning like a >> ventriloquist every time i connected to my media drive in the network, and >> was wondering if going to the tropics too many times gave it a bad shake in >> the components and made it go asthmatic. >> >> So i checked activity monitor, the more logical explanation, and looked at >> the processes. The qtkitserver, short for quicktime kit server i guess, was >> running at a whopping 160% of CPU usage. Now this i'm a bit flabbergasted to >> see, as a CPU usually doesn't run over 100% unless it's overclocked, and >> i've never done that to any of my macs. >> >> I killed the process, but really wondering what the QTKITserver does in >> general. >> >> Anyone encountered this before? >> >> Best >> >> >> Yuma DX® >> >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
