Quicktime movies won't delete!

April 2, 2009 1:03 PM

(Mac OS 10.5) Is Quicktime hiding files from me?

When Quicktime plays a movie file for me, it shows up as a "Recent" file in the Quicktime menu. But even if I throw the file in the trash, and delete the trash, it is still somehow able to play the movie. I can't find the file by searching for its name. But yet, there it is.

Where are these files hiding, and how can I find and delete them?

posted by musofire to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Best answer: If you cmd-click on the icon in the title bar it'll show the path to the file.

Can QuickTime still find these files after you quit and restart it? After you log out? After you power-cycle?
posted by hattifattener at 1:09 PM on April 2, 2009

FWIW, I just tried this on Vista and Quick Time acts as expected. If I delete a file and then choose it out of the Recent menu option, I get an error explaining that the file cannot be found.
posted by niles at 1:48 PM on April 2, 2009

This sounds like the underlying unix of Mac OS poking thru. Under unix, if I have a file opened in my program, and another program deletes the file (like me in a 2nd command window), the file is still magically available to the process that already had it open. Once the first program closes, though, the file handle is released, and the file is truly gone. I suspect Quicktime has left an open handle for those recent files.

What happens if you fully quit Quicktime (don't just close the windows, goto the quicktime menu and select exit, or use mac-key-Q)?
posted by nomisxid at 2:12 PM on April 2, 2009

hattifattener has the answer for your situation. For what it's worth, QuickTime Player doesn't do this for me. (OS 10.5.6, latest QuickTime)
posted by pmbuko at 2:28 PM on April 2, 2009