ITunes 10.4 crashing when syncing music

Question

I'm having a major problem after upgrading to iTunes 10.4 for Windows.  I'm now randomly crashing when syncing music to my Ipad 2.   It seems some sync fine and then all the sudden it crashes.
The crash I'm getting is:
AppName: itunes.exe     AppVer: 10.4.0.80     ModName: quicktime.qts
ModVer: 7.69.80.9     Offset: 001cd746
What's odd is that it's even crashing on audio podcasts that I downloaded on my iPad 2 which are being synced to my PC without issue, but then cause it to crash when syncing back.
I had no problems with 10.3.1 or earlier.

Answer 1

This is long, jump to the end if you don’t care about my new life problem! And sorry for my English, I’m not a native English speaker! Also, I’m just posting this stuff so people with this issue don’t have to try it all also.
ok, so my problem started with the ipad 2; i had a lot of pictures there but wanted to change the "stupid" way (for a windows addict) that apple arranges, or not, folders hierarchy. I deleted every single picture and imported my new structure (in windows). Useless to say that i got stuck here. i tried 100 times and i got the quicktime.qts module error (iTunes crashing). Good to know, obv, but what do i know of quicktime!? nothing...
Since i have an iPhone 4, and the iPhone only ever carried pictures taken with it, never had synced pictures before i decided to give it a try. same error…Ok, now i know the problem isn't in the devices but in iTunes itself, Quicktime, most likely.
Not happy with this conclusion, i decided to restore factory settings on both ipad 2 and iPhone 4 (4.3.5 ios). Gave it another try, after deleting every ipod photo cache folder in my library and re-installing iTunes completely (i tried re-installing before devices restoring with same error). No luck here either...
Went to discussion boards and figured a lot of people are having this issue, so i thought it’s probably in the iTunes 10.4 update, since i didn’t have a backup of my previous library, and i have 20000 songs, and didn’t want to lose the only library i had, i opted not to install previous iTunes version because i knew my library wouldn’t work and i rather have a decent library with no videos, than videos with a new library to build. So I didn’t try this.
i tried everything, there's a post that a guy, a while ago, resolved this issue (or similar) simply by deauthorizing and reauthorizing computer, or just by logging in to his iTunes account... other person resolved his issue by logging on a new windows account and syncing with a "clean" iTunes then moving to his previous account. Or deleting some quicktime files and folders that are on system32 folder, besides the 2 files that are needed... i only had the 2 needed files, no more! I tried it all, no luck.
Somewhere i read it could have to do with quicktime not being the default video player for .mov files, so i made it, still no luck.
My last try was messing with the registry looking for "stupid leftovers" of quicktime, a lot of them i knew shouldn’t be there and i deleted, but i was still stuck on the crash error. for this i removed iTunes, cleaned computer from apple stuff (all but my library files that i backed up),
cleaned registry and installed everything back again.in the meanwhile, no sure when, i figured since this could have something to do with quicktime (i noticed that it gets stuck when starting to optimize videos), i created a test folder with one picture and 1 video and I managed to pass through optimizing process. tried with 3 movies, after emptying the device and deleting cache folder (like from scratch), but Kabooom, crashed again. tried same thing, but first i opened the movies in quicktime in windows, then synced and it worked!! probably this could be the solution, tried with my whole library (2k+ photos and about 100 movies) but crashed again... probably i forgot/messed up to open some movie in quicktimes pior to syncing, but well, i was fed up with .mov files, or .mp4, m4v, FWIW (i tried them all).
After this (i only did all this because I’m computer addicted!) i rested my case, i posted on the forums and had 2 choices: wait for apple to solve this, if they care or Format my PC and probably be getting the same error, this is the only thing i didn't try cause i have lots of stuff to backup and configure, and lots of onetime license software...
I kept doing stuff with computer, installed a bunch of software (not related to this but related to DVD and movie editing stuff), after i stopped working i retried again, Meh, cleaned everything and got thru once with my new test folder (with different videos and pictures), but when i went to my REAL folders, APPCRASH again. Broke my mouse (apple owes me this!), stopped working and went to sleep.
I was real convinced this could have something to do with video encoding/decoding stuff. And also about quicktime
Now, the only thing working for me was:
Opening movies in quicktime prior to syncing (worked once or twice)
syncing right after I turned on the computer, but only small folders.
Makes me think problem is in the processor, since it eats a lot of CPU and memory at the end of a 1000 picture and videos sync. And it crashes when starting to optimize videos, sometimes I see it passes like 2 or 3 movies and crashes after. That’s why I can sync small folders right after I turn on my computer, but with big folders itunes just lags my windows wayyyy to much and at the end (when gets to optimizing videos) is really hot and slow, and crashes, I could make 1 video at a time but I believe itunes should work for itself without these “workarounds”.
I’m a computer guy and an application that uses up almost all computer CPU when “working” and “eats” way too much RAM is not a  solid application… in this part itunes *****.