Play Almost Anything in QuickTime

We’ve all been there. We get a email from a friend with a funny video, that we just have to see. The problem is we can’t open it in QuickTime. Okay, no problem lets try VLC. Wait, it doesn’t work in VLC either, what now?

Try the Swiss-Army knife for QuickTime, Perian!

perian_logo.png

Perian is a really cool and rather handy component for QuickTime. It is open source, so it is free and is very simple to install. Just put the Perian QuickTime component in the the QuickTime components folder and you are done.

Perian supports additional formats for QuickTime including:

  • AVI and FLV
  • 3ivX, DivX, Flash Screen Video, MS-MPEG4, Sorenson H.263, Truemotion VP6, and Xvid
  • AVI support for: AAC, AC3 Audio, H.264, MPEG4, and VBR MP3

This really is a must have for anyone using video on their Mac. While it may not play everything you need it to, with the addition of Flip 4 Mac, VLC and MPEG Streamclip there should be almost no video format that your Mac cannot handle.