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JD wants to know how he can play Windows Media, DivX, Xvid, MKV, and other types of videos in the QuickTime Player. This is a good question, as millions of Mac users may be surprised to know they cannot play most videos downloaded from the Internet without installing extra software.
If you’ve ever wondered what to do with .avi, .wmv, .mkv, or any other type of video that wouldn’t play on your Mac, you’ll be happy to know there’s two ways to handle these files.
First, let me explain why you can’t initially play these files. When video is digitized, it is usually compressed so that it takes up less hard drive space. For videos transferred over the Internet, the compression has to be much greater so that the file is small enough to download quickly.
The method of compression used is called the “codec” (for more info on codecs, click here). For example, when you get a video from the iTunes Store, Apple videos ate encoded with the H.264 video codec. The QuickTime Player has to know how to decode these files in order to play the video. It understands what H.264 is, but it doesn’t understand many other video codecs.
Thus, we have two ways to handle these “missing” codecs: we can install them, or we can install some other application that already has them.
The Swiss Army Knife of Video Players
That’s the fantastic VLC application that I covered in my post on converting your DVDs to QuickTime files. VLC is like a competitor to QuickTime Player and can play nearly any video file you throw at it, including DVDs. In fact, it can even stream those videos over a network so that other VLC users in your home/office can watch them. For those of you who watch a lot of subtitled video, it has excellent support for subtitle files (.srt). I also like the fact that I can easily make the volume go above 100%, which is nice on movies with very low audio levels.
With VLC, you simply open the application and choose your video to play. The interface is easy to use, especially for simple playback. Most of the advanced options (such as de-interlacing and subtitles) are in the various menus. For those looking for a one-stop solution to playing videos, just try VLC, and you’ll likely be very happy.
“Fixing” QuickTime Player
Despite the great functionality of VLC, I still prefer to install the missing codecs. Why? One, I simply prefer the interface of the QuickTime Player. Two, by installing the codecs, you can view these previously unwatchable videos in web browsers (which is great when you don’t have the option to download them). To do so, we need two sets of files: one for Windows Media videos and one for everything else.
To get the files for Windows Media videos, we have to download the Flip4Mac Plug-in Components for QuickTime. This is a free download and gives you a normal installer, which will put the files where they need to go (in /Library/QuickTime/Plug-ins). One of the advantages you get with these plug-ins is true Windows Media support. I’ve occasionally found VLC cannot open a very new or very old WMV file, but these components always are up to the task.
Next up is Perian, which bills itself as the Swiss Army knife of QuickTime components. This is a truly deserved tag line because Perian can play MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, DivX, 3ivx, H.264, Sorenson H.263, FLV/Sorenson Spark, FSV1, VP6, H263i, VP3, HuffYUV, FFVHuff, MPEG1 & MPEG2 Video, Fraps, Snow, NuppelVideo, Techsmith Screen Capture, DosBox Capture (with the extensions AVI, DIVX, FLV, MKV, GVI, VP6, and VFW). This means it can play just about anything from YouTube clips with crummy quality to HD video streams.
Perian is also easy to install. Once downloaded, you simply click on the Perian.prefPane, which first installs Perian into your System Preferences. From there, you must click on the “Install Perian” button to play to place the plug-in files in the sam directory as the WMV files. After this, you are ready to open the QuickTime Player and play your videos.
Final Words
In the end, you’re best off downloading both VLC and the Flip4Mac/Perian combo. These files take up very little room on your hard drive, and between the two of them, you’re likely never to come across another video file you cannot open.
What do you think of this recommendation? Have you found other ways to play video files that are easier or better? Did you have any trouble installing these programs? Let everyone know in the comments section.
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Thanks! That was a big help. It is hard to get a straight forward answer without people trying to sell you products.