Perian, the Only Real Video Format Solution
Thursday, 8. November 2007, 03:50:33
Getting video files to play in Mac OS X has always been a rather tough issue for new Mac users. Often on various websites I’ll see a help thread asking how to play certain video files such as WMV, AVI and the like which are common video formats found on the web. And the typical answer varies between one of two answers: 1) the responder suggests the free, open source program VLC which can handle many video formats, or 2) the responder suggests Flip4Mac (a Quicktime plugin suite) which costs $29 and only supports a few video file formats.The average user opts for VLC, for obvious reasons. Each solution, however, has its faults.
VLC, while supporting various formats, doesn’t integrate with iMovie, Safari or anything else. It’s just a program with no real intention to integrate with the system. So, for people like me, VLC isn’t a good option as I use iMovie for making my Youtube videos.
Flip4Mac, on the other-hand, integrates with iMovie, Safari and the like but lacks the vast amount of video formats that VLC supports as well as costing $29.
In my opinion, the faults of both those solutions are too good to consider viable, and luckily, others agree. There’s yet another free, open source solution that isn’t often mentioned, but essentially combines the pros of both the previous solutions into one. And this solution is called Perian.
Perian is touted as the “swiss-army knife for Quicktime,” and it is just that. Like Flip4Mac, Perian integrates into Quicktime, adding support for various video formats inside of iMovie, Safari, and the like. And like VLC, Perian adds support for many video formats.
Basically Quicktime gains all the functionality that VLC had while remaining as Quicktime. So next time you see one of those help threads, mention Perian, the best solution of the three.
Well, that about finishes this blog, so check back with me tomorrow for another Apple-related article.
--DMXell
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