It’s no accident that the folks at the Perian project chose the image of a Swiss Army knife for its versatile System Preferences pane -- when it comes to QuickTime video, the extension enabled all sorts of files to be played back, but its creators have announced one final version that marks the end of its development.
Perian.org has announced the retirement of its popular, free Perian software after more than six years of development. The project plans one last hurrah in the form of a final update coming shortly which promises to include “all the fixes we’ve worked on since the last release,” but ominously notes “it may -- or may not -- work on 10.8,” aka the forthcoming OS X Mountain Lion.
“We began the Perian project over 6 years ago,” the website reads. “We wanted to simplify viewing your content. Our team has attained that goal and with that in mind, Perian will be retired soon. Our stewardship has been a blast but it's time for all of us to move on.
“From the beginning we kept Perian simple,” the post continues. “Our preferences were minimal, updating was easy, and we gradually grew the product to add in extras like subtitles and different formats. We've contributed a lot. Today, Perian stands as complete as it ever will be under our stewardship.”
While noting Perian didn’t accomplish all of the goals it set out to conquer -- such as “an official, flexible and well-documented import API to speed up MKV” -- the tool has been invaluable to many users. Official support will end starting 90 days after the final release, at which point the project plans to “wrap up our loose ends, pack up our bags, and move on to new and exciting projects.”
The good news is that the Perian source code will get posted to either Google Code or Github, and the project encourages developers to “pick up where we left off,” which we certainly hope someone will take them up on. In the meantime, the project recommends Niceplayer, with an eye toward VLC or MPlayer OS X “if and when Perian stops working.”
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