Perian “The Swiss-Army Knife for Quicktime”
Being a minimalist I quickly became captivated by Apple’s ability to streamline multiple functions into single, easy to use applications. OS X is a clear example of this consistency, every bar, every window and every feature all reflect an over arching goal of practicality and use. My desire for a clean, simple interface quickly translated to third party apps as well. But thankfully most OS X applications follow the very same streamline pattern.
Pre Perian
Not an application, but a Quicktime component, I felt Perian could do with a mention because without it, I wouldn’t be using Quicktime at all. Previous to Perian I relied heavily on VLC for my video needs. I would change all my defaults so my video collection would have immediate access to it. Plus VLC offers unique qualities like network streaming. For basic use however, I felt the need to minimize my Hard Drive foot print and minimize the amount of applications I currently had. In my quest I came across Perian, a total Quicktime lifesaver.
Post Perian
Perian allows you to playback DivX and Xvid, among other formats, with Quicktime. The only issue I ran into was playing full screen. Without Quicktime Pro, full screen viewing is disabled unless you’re using iTunes or Front Row. Thanks to Perian being a component plug-in, and Quicktime being such a deep component of OS X, Front Row obligingly played my DivX files in full screen. Just be sure and keep your DivX in your movies folder, and Front Row will recognize them.
From what I understand of the Apple TV hacks, Perian is the choice for DivX playback. So why not use it on all your computers as well? With Perian installed on multiple computers, I’ve been able to share my DivX through Front Row across my network. Usually that requires sharing a folder or two, but that’s another story. I’m sure Perian is the component of choice for the ultra Mac fan, and probably works best for those of you who include a Mac Mini in your Living Rooms.
So while this may not work for everyone, I encourage you to at least give Perian a go because you’ll still retain DivX playback from OS X, which trust me, is amazing. And if it helps you save even a fraction of hard drive space, well my work here is done then. If you’ve had different experiences or uses for Perian, please share them, I’m very curious to see what else can be done with this digital “Swiss-Army Knife”.
Jonathan on January 7th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Didn’t Apple allow the full screen function for free in 7.5 or one of the other recent Apple updates. I remember reading that a while back.
Lucky on January 7th, 2008 at 9:18 am
Yes, fullscreen is free now. You should fix your article. I can’t imagine how an apple blog could get this wrong.
shriansh on January 7th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Another thing. You don’t have have your movies in the ‘movies’ folder for front row to recognise them. just have an alias of the folder they’re in in the movies folder. and that works out quite fine.
Also, i’ve had a few problems with the AC3 audio codec with perian. Anyone else had that?
Luca on January 7th, 2008 at 10:04 am
that actually sounds really useful because im currently encoding all my video into mp4 format so that i can watch and store everything iTunes for front row.
And yes full screen does work with quicktime now.
Scott H on January 7th, 2008 at 11:40 am
I know Perian doesn’t support it, but this seems like a good place to ask…Does anyone know a way to convert RealMedia (.rm or .rmvb) files, or play them in ANY other player besides the primitive one that Real has available for Macs?
Staff Comment Arvin Dang, TheAppleBlog on January 7th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
@Lucky: My apologize for my appalling mistake, I remember hearing that as well. I run Quicktime Pro on both my Mac’s and couldn’t find a solid link corroborating that fact. However I plan on writing an article geared towards Quicktime Pro where I will make specific mention of the Full Screen option now being default in Quicktime. Thanks for the catch.
@Scott: I couldn’t think of more recent Real encoders that would help. But I did run across the ability to use MPlayer for Real Player files which might come in handy (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20041005010240934). I was hoping Flip4Mac or even Visual Hub might be able to achieve what you’re looking for, but it doesn’t look like it.
Lime on January 7th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
hats off to the perian team, can’t believe how well this works. I used to swear by VLC but I cant remember the last time I used it now, and much prefer using Quicktime with Perian
Pete on January 8th, 2008 at 2:27 am
Perian is cool, but for iMovie (7.1) to work properly, I have to disable it, hope they fix that soon.
Bill on January 8th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
I was wondering if it is compatible with Leopard
Staff Comment Arvin Dang, TheAppleBlog on January 8th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
@Bill: It is compatible with Leopard. On my MacBook it’s working perfectly, however on my iMac g5 running Leopard, it’s a bit glitchy. The videos playback choppy, and sometimes will freeze Front Row. I attribute it to Perian only because of a pop up message after the Freeze Up indicated Perian could be to blame.
So if you’re running Intel, all the better. Anyone know of any fixes? Or if it really is Perian that’s causing the glitches?
Arcani on March 30th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
@Scott: I used the hint below to enable realmedia support in ffmpegX. I was then able to convert those pesky rmvb files to avi. Then to a self-contained Quicktime Movie file that could be imported into my iTunes Library.
You just drag and drop the rmvb file onto the ffmpegX app window. AVI with MPEG4 should be selected as the default profile. (The default video and audio bitrate makes files 2x as large as the original rmvb files, adjust bitrates according to taste)
After conversion by ffmpegX, open the files with Quicktime and do a “Save as…” self-contained movie.
You can then delete the intermediate avi files to reclaim disk space and banish the rmvb files to the bit bucket.
How to enable RealMedia codecs support in ffmpegX or mplayer:
(source: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060906153448633)