The death of Perian is bittersweet for Mac users. On one hand, the open-source Swiss Army knife of video codecs will be missed by millions of video junkies who relied on its seamless integration with QuickTime to play media files that were otherwise ignored. On the other, its demise seems to be due to a lack of necessity; as the iPad and iPhone have grown in popularity, so have their video formats--namely MPEG4 and H.264--pushing lesser-known codecs to the background.
However, those still suffering through QuickTime error messages have options. Perian will obviously still work with Lion (though the developers offer no such promises for Mountain Lion), but here are three free, open-source alternatives for OS 10.8 and beyond.
The original open-source video player for the Mac (and still the gold standard), VLC is the default video player for millions of Mac users in the know. "Composed of volunteers, developing and promoting free, open-source multimedia solutions," VLC can handle everything thrown at it and rarely meets a codec it can't digest--including Perian staples DivX, AVI, XviD, MKV, WebM, WMV, FLV, DDT, AGT, KSM and any other initials you can dream up. (OK, a few of those aren't actually video files...)
Another jack-of-all-trades player, MPlayer OSX Extended is gaining serious ground on VLC. According to the developers, MPlayer OSX Extended "aims to deliver a powerful, functional and no frills video player for OSX." Clean, simple and powerful--and of course, ready to play every popular codec--with multithreading and support for 64-bit machines--MPlayer isn't quite ready to dethrone VLC, but it's certainly worth a spot in your applications folder.
A relatively new cross-platform player, UMPlayer (short for Universal Media Player) burst onto the Mac scene with hundreds of codecs, including AAC, AC3, ASF, AVI, DIVX, FLV, H.263, Matroska, MOV, MP3, MP4, MPEG, OGG, QT, RealMedia, VOB, Vorbis, WAV, WMA, WMV, XVID and many more. It can also stream (and record) files from YouTube, play SHOUTcast playlists, take screenshots, and even supports "displaying through some hardware MPEG decoder boards, such as the Siemens DVB, DXR2 and DXR3/Hollywood+" (for those who know what that is).
Matzky
November 04, 2012 at 7:32am
IMHO the best video player available for the Mac is Mplayer X. Mplayer is the reason VLC got a GUI overhaul. That nice shiny black. Can't believe it is not in this list. I'd like to add the link but the spam filet doesn't allow me. Maybe that's why the post is without links as well... ;) Google it, .org
bitshifter
May 16, 2012 at 2:33pm
I really don't like the trending trend of article generators (sometimes called writers or bloggers), that can't be bothered to hyperlink their articles. You remember hyperlinks right? Arguably the original feature of the web.
glandix
May 15, 2012 at 4:02pm
Those aren't really replacements for Perian ... Perian is a collection of codecs for use in OS X ... these are movie players ... for a great movie player, try Movist (in the App Store)
Michael Simon
May 15, 2012 at 9:19pm
Sure, but these media players (not just for movies) can replace what QuickTime is/was with Perian. Perian is in a class by itself.
