Quicktime controls disappear and I can't get them back, in Lion.

Question

When I open a movie in Quicktime 10.1, in Lion, the play controls are there on the movie. As soon as I start the movie and move the cursor they disappear, as they are supposed to, but if I move the cursor back over the movie the controls do not come back and I cannot control the movie. When the movie ends there are still no controls. I can't seem to find any Preferences or settings to contol QT's behavior at all. What is the solution to this?
thanks,
Jack

Answer 1

I'm having the exact same issue. I lanch a video in QuickTime Player (Version 10.2 - 603.6) and the title bar and player controls are there as expected. Note I'm in the windowed mode (not full screen). I click play within the player contorls and the video start playing. I move my cursor out of the window bounds and the player controls and title bar disappear. So far all of this is normal. But if I bring my cursor back within the window area, the player controls and title bar never reappear. I try everything- clicking in the window area, moving my cursor in and out, bring the QuickTime app into focus, etc. Nothing will bring the controls back. I can tell that the are really there, because if I click where the play/pause button should be, the video will play or pause. I can even click where the scrub bar should be and the video will jump to that part of the video.
I've tried using the third command (Always show titlebar/controller) on this page:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=775514
defaults write com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX MGUIVisibilityNeverAutohide 1
and that dose cause the controler and title bar to stay on the screen at all times. But that’s not what I want- I want it to disappear when my cursor is out of the window (which is the normal behavior). If I run the command to undo it:
defaults write com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX MGUIVisibilityNeverAutohide 0
that will return QuickTime to the same messed up functionality. I'm running OS 10.8.2 on a 2012 Mac Mini. I also found other people on the boards that seems to be having the same problem from years ago so it seem like it might be a long-standing problem. Any thoughts?
Other threads:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3222835
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2595095