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Perian 1.1. released

by Christina Warren Feb 7th 2008 at 12:00PM

A few weeks ago, we were talking about our must-have Mac programs on the Talkcast and one of our readers mentioned Perian; I couldn't agree more. For anyone unfamiliar, Perian is a plugin that allows QuickTime to playback all kind of popular video formats (.AVI, .MKV, .FLV and more). It's a great utility for anyone who watches video on their Mac. Back in December, Erica wrote about the 1.1 beta; well beta testing is over and Perian 1.1 is available now!

Here's a rundown of some of the improvements since the last update, taken from Perian's update page:

  • Major performance improvements
  • TrueAudio, MP1, and DTS audio support
  • Slice-based multithreaded decoding for MPEG-1/2/H.264
  • Apple H.264 now handles AVCHD/interlaced video
  • Compatibility fixes for QuickTime 7.4 and Leopard
  • Objective-C GC compatibility
  • Fixed a crash in Toast
  • Better subtitle rendering
  • Subtitles play during MKV loading
  • Snow support
  • Miscellaneous bug fixes
Perian is free (donations are accepted) and requires at least OS X 10.4.7

Thanks Robert!

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A few weeks ago, we were talking about our must-have Mac programs on the Talkcast and one of our readers mentioned Perian; I couldn't agree...
 

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James

yay Perian 1.1!! I have to say Perian is one of my fav plugins for ANY Mac app. It makes Quicktime function as it should and my video-watching world go 'round.

February 10 2008 at 1:03 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
dbr

If anyone wants rid of the preference pane icon, I shoved together a guide on it:
http://neverfear.org/blog/view/Banish_the_Perian_Preference_Pane/

In short, prod around inside the Perian.prefPane package, find the .zip file containing the Perian.component and shove it in /Library/Quicktime/ or such

February 10 2008 at 4:05 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Anon

Perian is nice, but sadly, it's ultimately useless for anyone but the casual video watcher.

Annoyances:
- No OGM support
- ASS subtitle rendering isn't as nice as libass's (though 1000 times better than VLC's non-existant support)

Showstoppers:
- You have to wait for MKV files to load. Perian developers say it's a QuickTime limitation. Makes playing any MKV file a boring task, opening MKV files over the local network is impossible.
- Conflicts a lot with other Quicktime components, things like external subtitle loading breaking will happen out of nowhere. Feels like 2003 all over again.

and, the worse of them all:
- Every single Quicktime update *WILL* break Perian. To make matters worse, Perian developers will just fix things in SVN and refuse to release an update. So you waste time and compile Perian yourself from SVN or you're straight out of luck; you'll be left with an unusable application. This is simply unacceptable.

Conclusion:
Just use mplayer. There are nice recent builds available here:
http://haque.net/software/mplayer/mplayerosx/builds/

Throw in "-ass -embeddedfonts -fontconfig -sid 0" in "Additional parameters" under Preferences and you're done.

February 09 2008 at 8:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Anon's comment
Justin

Thanks for the tip re: MPlayer. I had tried it before, found it severely lacking, and thought perhaps I should try it again with the version you linked to. Unfortunately, I didn't find its performance to be any better than the last time I tried it. On my 2 x 2.0 GHz G5 Power Mac, it took at least 60 seconds to load a 4.4 GB 720p MKV file. Moreover, once it did start, playback was choppy, and audio was woefully out-of-sync. VLC played the same file with aplomb.

May 01 2008 at 1:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Fernando

Subtitles still wont work on Leopard's front row :-(

February 08 2008 at 4:22 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Fernando's comment
hagar

No, the subtitle issue is a bug in Front Row, and not in perian. It will not be fixed in 10.5.2 either

February 08 2008 at 5:28 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
imatt

Fuck robert. Noon, seriously?! I submitted this tip LAST NIGHT...like before 10.

Breaking news...

February 07 2008 at 10:25 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mark Gilbert

I just tried to download perian from perian.org but the site seems to be down. Just thought I'd add that it's still available through macupdate.com

February 07 2008 at 7:17 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Chris

The updates boast DTS audio support, yet, when I try to play a .dts file in QuickTime, it gives me the error: The file is not a movie file. Any suggestions?

February 07 2008 at 6:02 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jeremy

I don't install this because, for reasons which aren't explained, it includes "support" for codecs that already work just fine, and there is no indication of how or whether installing it will interfere.

February 07 2008 at 4:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rob

#12 Sven -- Yes you can play FLAC in iTunes. See

http://barelyfocused.net/blog/2006/10/12/native-flac-in-itunesquicktime/

http://www.simplehelp.net/2007/09/20/how-to-play-flac-files-in-itunes/

You may need to change the metadata in each FLAC file using the setOGGs program to fool iTunes/QT to play them. But it works just fine.

February 07 2008 at 4:38 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Rob's comment
Christina Warren

Except for not being able to play tracks by track number (it sorts by title) and taking tons of CPU power. This actually was the workaround I was thinking of, I forgot that it was possible to extend it to iTunes too. If it is usable for you, that's awesome -- it was just easier for me to convert the FLAC stuff I played frequently to Apple Lossless or use Cog/Play.

February 07 2008 at 4:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
ZorinLynx

Uses twice as much CPU as MPlayer to play the same MKV file, AND has glitches in the audio while playing the file.

This still needs a bit more work. I'm glad they're trying, though. Would be nice to see Quicktime play all the common video formats.

February 07 2008 at 3:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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