14 DAY TRIAL // Perian, a free and open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats, has been promoted to version 1.2.2 which delivers support for the Google-advertised WebM open video format and VP8 media container, to name the most noteworthy enhancements.
Previously, Mac users could only play back those formats by downloading Chrome for Mac OS X, but Perian now enables support right within Apple’s own QuickTime player.
Perian, “the swiss-army knife for QuickTime,” now also supports compressed Matroska (MKV) formats, and FFv1 lossless video.
Here’s the original changelog (lacking bug fixes and other notes discussed further below):
· Added WebM/VP8 support · Added support for compressed MKV tracks, as generated by newer versions of mkvtoolnix · Added FFv1 lossless video support · Added an internal decoder for Theora, fixing compatibility problems with XiphQT.
In addition to fixing various issues with formats already supported by Perian, the new release is notably the last one to support Macintosh computers based on the PowerPC CPU architecture.
“The next planned version will remove support for PowerPC and Mac OS X versions prior to 10.6. Maintenance updates may be provided if necessary,” the Perian Team wrote.
For now, the minimum system requirements still call for Mac OS X 10.4.7 (Tiger) or higher.
As a PrefPane app, Perian can be easily installed by just downloading the disk image from the link below and double clicking its icon. From there on, just follow the on-screen instructions and Perian will be installed in seconds.
Perian is a 3.7 MB download and can be used by anyone completely free of charge.
Removing Perian from your system is even easier. Simply access it from System Preferences and select “Remove Perian” from the General tab.