Perian/VLC: Now your mac is video compliant
If there is something weird on Mac machines, this is the video player: Quicktime performs good output quality but only a few codecs are supported: forget to read DivX or some standard formats. But, fon’t forget, your Mac is open-minded and then you have 2 solutions: VLC and Perian.
Video LAN
If you are coming from Windows or Linux, you know this tool: a video player which can read any video format with its native libraries. If you can’t read your favorite AVI file through VLC, something is rotten in the state of Denmark!
Well, you can (and I’ve) ask the Mac to open all the AVI, MPG, MPEG and even MOV files with VLC: you go in the Finder, look for a video file, ask for details (“Informations sur le fichier” in french) and ask to use VLC for all the files having the same type: attaching an extension to an application is very similar to the Windows’ world.
Perian
It is the swiss knife for video and Quicktime. If you like, if you want Quicktime and nothing else, this is the right tool. Same principle than VLC: having the codecs to read some non-Apple formats. The idea behind is to offer more codecs to the Quicktime software and the capability to add AVI support to it.
Coming with Perian: as the codec is inside the Quicktime, a preview for your videos is available right now in the Finder! Then dowload it now!
Those 2 software works perfectly together in perfect harmony.
