The various non-backward compatibility issues in QuickTime are maddening. I'm glad it is no longer used in games I like.

Weird... I just installed QuickTime Alternative and QuickTime together. Nothing solved. But then, i uninstalled QT Alternative and tried my luck. And ta-da! It's works perfectly...

So i've got this game recently, installed it and got the nice 1.04 fatal panic error.
After some reading here and trying i got a simple solution. First of all you don't need the full quicktime.
Instead grab QT Lite. Latest version is 4.1.0. QT Lite is the successor of Quicktime Alternative. It's a lightweight player and provides the quicktime codecs. You can get QT Lite 4.1.0 here
Install it and then go to configuration. Go to advanced Then under the field video uncheck enable directdraw acceleration. Yes, that's the same as cogadh said in 2009 and this option is also in QT Lite.
Anyway, don't forget to hit apply and then close the program. Now if everything goes right you can play the game without problems and with the videos enabled. No messing with files anymore.

Hmm, tried the game recently on a 32bit XP system. Run into the infamous "direct draw failure" problem.
Have latest directX9.1c , quicktime alternative installed, also FFDshow, game is run as admin.

What I tried, after searching for solutions:
- lowering sound acceleration in dxdiag
- de-installing quicktime alternative
- installing original quicktime 4.0
- disabling the direct-draw accelaration in QT (or disabling dirextX acceleration there overall)
- excluding septerra.exe from ffdshow
- installing current quicktime lite
- exchanging the quicktime.qts in the septerra folder (against older/recent)
- deactivating the quicktime.qts in the septerra folder by renaming
- adding a quicktime qtp (config file with deactivated directX) to the septerra folder (there is none)

Nothing worked, seems I'm stuck at the moment :/

Currently I try to find out with processexplorer which quciktime lib overall septerra tries to use.

update: as suggested by timeslip, transcoding of the videos was fixing the problem for me (http://www.gog.com/forum/septerra_core_legacy_of_the_creator/unofficial_patch/page1)
GOG should provide in general the videos in a transcoded better supported format in the installer to avoid this hassles.

Runned it also on XP. Now i'm not sure if it makes a difference if you run it on a dual-core/quad-core or a singlecore.
I've played it on on a good old pentium 4 northwood cpu and also have all the xp patches, latest directx 9 version, framework 1.1, 2 and 4, cccp and qt alternative.

i kinda went another way..I noticed that it was the same error I had with other games..
(CTD) during intro..

I REMOVED THE QUICK TIME !! (heh..I don't care for intro's..)

Now no more crash..and the game runs..

And why the hell do people do that ? They always tend to program stuff patchwork style..

It's like a lil of this and lil of that, and always when the bugs start, it's "O.o"..where's that bug ?

If you use a single platform to generate the entire game on, I'm sure it's all the same code..
(bug is easy to solve..)
But if ur patchworking it's the first question..""What 'add-on' creates the glitch ?.."

Anyways..bye..if Quicktime is included (or other stuff for video displays etc..try deleting that first..)
that works plenty of times..(that is..if the code skips to the next part of the code and doesn't blow a gasket..)

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UNREAL ENGINE RULES !!! (yea..a single platform, and after 17 years in use on every OS since then..still works..)