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but even that's not strictly true, since you can use Fluke or other utilities to enable support for FLAC in iTunes, QuickTime, and other first-party apps.

That's not true anymore as the move from the Quicktime to AVFoundation frameworks shut out 3rd party format converters like Perian and Fluke. Note that the link you used is from 2013 and the Fluke no longer works on newer versions of OSX.

In my case, I converted my FLAC collection to the native Apple Lossless format and I can convert back if I wish in the future.

It depends on the video. On my Mac, VLC uses vastly more CPU to play an H.264 file than Quicktime does.

And with Perian (http://perian.org/) installed, Quicktime plays mkv files without issue.

http://www.perian.org/

I think QuickTime X is only available on Snow Leopard, so it's preinstalled, you just need to install a codec pack (Perian is pretty good). After that it works quite well, the UI is minimalist yet pretty : the video takes up the whole window (including borders) and the controls fade in if you hover over the video.

who would want to develop something like a media swiss-army knife for the mac;

These folks?

Perian - The swiss-army knife for Quicktime

Whenever I do that iTunes spits out something like "We're gonna go ahead and index everything in folders the way we want anyway, since we run this bitch and you better recognize."

Sarcasm aside, when you're transferring >100GB of music iTunes sucks balls. Also the overhead of iTunes makes it pretty annoying when you just want to pop a file to preview real quick,

Step one: select file in finder

Step two: press space bar to play file in the built in preview. This works with any media quicktime can play, images, pdf files, etc... Over a network or locally. You can also use finder's cover flow view to preview audio/video files by simply clicking the big play button. If you really want to you can still open the file for preview in quicktime but what's the point?

or watch a DVD without all the fucking waiting and protection bullshit.

iTunes does not play DVDs. It'll play rips just dandy, though, provided you rip to something quicktime can use, which with Perian is pretty much everything.

Parian lets QuckTime [7] play MKV files just fine. I keep finding myself turning off subtitles though...

No easy way to add Xvid/Divx support. No Xvid codec for OS X that I could find.

Perian.

For some links:

http://www.divx.com/en/software/mac/divx

http://www.perian.org/

googling "mac video codecs" has perian at number 2, xvid at number 3, 3vix at number 8 and WMV at number 9.

Perian+Quicktime is awful for Matroska. Really, I wouldn't bother. See the first FAQ under http://perian.org/#support

Fair enough.

I've assumed that the problem I had was related to this:
http://perian.org/#support

Why does it take so long for MKV to load?

            QuickTime expects to know about the entire movie when playing it, but that's not possible with many formats, including MKV and MPEG. Ask Apple to support seeking without an index if you'd like this to go away!

I had hopes that Quicktime X might have removed that restriction, but I think that Perian would have to be recoded to take advantage of it.

Have you tried the "apply to all files of this type" in the Get Info window? AFAIK this is how you re-associate a file extension to a new program.

As for Quicktime's formats, try Perian: it is a codec pack for QuickTime (a la Directshow) which integrates ffmpeg, MKV, and a few other formats.

Mac has Perian which is FOSS, so while it would be a shame to lose VLC on OS X it won't be the end of support for codecs Apple doesn't support.

Why use VLC as a player when Perian installs codecs that allow quicktime player (or any quicktime based app) to play back anything VLC will. It's basically ffdshow for mac. I rarely use VLC anymore for that reason. Quicktime player just feels more lightweight as it starts up faster.

Just use http://www.perian.org/ instead.

Actually all the AVIs play in Quicktime, but for some reason the aspect ratio is wrong on some of them (16:9 plays as 4:3). Perian gives you pretty much every codec from VLC.

http://perian.org/

Related - the open source Perian enables QuickTime application support for additional media:
File formats: AVI, DIVX, FLV, MKV, GVI, VP6, and VFW
Video types: MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, DivX, 3ivx, H.264, Sorenson H.263, FLV/Sorenson Spark, FSV1, VP6, H263i, VP3, HuffYUV, FFVHuff, MPEG1 & MPEG2 Video, Fraps, Snow, NuppelVideo, Techsmith Screen Capture, DosBox Capture
Audio types: Windows Media Audio v1 & v2, Flash ADPCM, Xiph Vorbis (in Matroska), and MPEG Layer I & II Audio, True Audio, DTS Coherent Acoustics, Nellymoser ASAO
AVI support for: AAC, AC3 Audio, H.264, MPEG4, and VBR MP3
Subtitle support for SSA/ASS and SRT

you would think installing Perian would allow quicktime and thus safari to show ogg theora videos, but safari still won't do it, even when spoofing as ff3.5

It's slow, crashy and overcomplicated.

Your first two arguments are unprovable flamebait, and the last is a matter of opinion. There are lots of people who think it's fast, stable, and just complicated enough.

It's got an ugly, messy desktop environment and it doesn't come with any decent usable software.

Again, the first is a matter of opinion, and I would think you could at least realize that you're in the minority. Lots of people think the desktop is pretty and well-organized. The last is, again, flamebait. It may not come with as much as your typical Linux distribution, but Safari, Pages, Mail, iTunes, Xcode, DVD Player, and the various iLife apps, among others, are far from unusuable or indecent. And, despite the fact that it doesn't come with as much as your typical Linux distribution, there are many thousands of free and open source programs that you can install.

It's got this weird browser that doesn't render stuff, doesn't have AdBlock and which usually gets replaced with Firefox.

"Doesn't render stuff" is, again, unproveable flamebait. Safari does just fine in rendering tests. You're also showing off your ignorance, as it does have AdBlock. Come on, that's the first link in Google.

It can't play back most videos or music files without expensive shareware.

This is just wrong and uninformed. Those are just examples off the top of my head that I like, there are plenty of other free and open source players out there.

It doesn't even have a usable text editor!

What about TextEdit and Pages is not usable?

If those are too flashy for you, just install vim or emacs. They work fine.

It's utter crap. Ubuntu is already better than Mac OSX. Please don't try to make another crappy OSX Aqua-looky-likey clone thing.

You clearly do not even know what you're talking about. Please spend some time using OS X or at least do a bit of research before you try to troll again.

I don't know but I'd thought whatever codecs was supported by your regular video player to run in the browser as well. I have perian and/or something else installed on my mac and can play most things, so I'd expect everything to work, macs can play H.264 with no additional codecs I believe so no problem there.
http://perian.org/

For a Windows machine you can installed something like super player and be done with it:
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

While I certainly can't speak for the Mac community as a whole, I'd personally much rather see an effective revamp of the Flip4Mac WMA/WMV codec pack rather than WMP11OSX. With the latter, I'd have to write off media using MS codecs entirely as I won't touch any version of WMP with a 10-foot pole; at least with the former I'm not bothered by it.

Ideally, decoding at the very least would be open-sourced and dropped into Perian (which should be integrated directly into the next version of OS X, IMO), though I don't see it happening any time soon. The more they lower the barrier to entry on using their products, the greater the adoption they'll see. Flip4Mac is a half-assed, third-party implementation that works very poorly and is a pain to get even to that state, the net result of which is that sites or products using that format/codec lose my business or attention very quickly (I doubt that they know that, as they'd likely switch to an open standard that anyone can use easily).

Microsoft is a big company with a lot of smart people. I'd like to think that at least one of them realizes that trying to lock people into using their products works against them, as third parties (website owners and such) have to account for non-MS visitors/customers. If MS was using open standards (at least for viewing... if they want to charge for a media encoder, that's fine by me), ANYONE would be able to easily view content that's wrapped up around an MS-designed open standard, which could in turn sell more encoder licenses. OTOH, having it wrapped in an inaccessible format forces those third parties to account for people that don't have access to that format, so they'll opt for something more available like AAC/h.264.

Make your money on content producers, charging them for encoder licenses and such. The vast majority of content out there isn't worth paying for a decoder license, so it will go unwatched. Everybody loses. I don't think anyone thinks for a second that YouTube would have anywhere near it's current level of success if you had to pay Adobe for Flash Player (never mind the Flash platform as a whole). Granted I realize that's not the best example with Linux/Flash issues, but it's at least free as in beer which is what 99% of the population cares about.

http://us.media.blizzard.com/1901200114/_video/gteaser/diablo3-teaser-en-US.flv

http://us.media.blizzard.com/1901200114/_video/gameplay/diablo3-gameplay-en-US.flv

I use Quicktime (Pro enabled, of course) for simple video manipulation. It especially useful with Perian installed. You can modify basic video components, use pitch-shifting and other stuff for audio, supports reverse playback, and record straight from a recording device. Theres a ton more you can do, more than I've gotten my hands on.I of course assume that the windows version of Quicktime pro is somewhat different. Along with OSS utils like mencoder, transcoder, ffmpegX, I really like Quicktime Pro, and all it requires is a serial. (Erm meaning you only have to pay once for it.. yeah.)

The plugin you're looking for is perian and some audio support was broken in the latest version of quicktime, i believe 7.3. A fix for that will be available in perian 1.1, whenever that becomes available.

Might be worth trying the latest version of Perian to improve other format support?
http://perian.org/

You'll also have to update to the latest version of Flip4Mac if you want to play Windows Media (WMV) files:
http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv_download.htm

Have you heard of Perian? It's a quicktime plugin that provides support for Divx, Xvid, Avi, FLV, MKV - pretty much everything but Real and WMV. I've barely had to use VLC since I installed it.

Lots of Mac users are looking for the ultimate codec toolkit. Apple's Quicktime comes with a number but there are more out there and many are really hard to find and/or are Windows-specific. I downloaded and installed Divx and the Divx encoder for some things I do. I use Flip4Mac's WMV codec as well as their professional tools (for things like MXF files). And lots of Mac users have as well to get Quicktime to work with .WMV files as Microsoft stopped supporting us with their .WMV player.

On a Mac, i believe you can get the Quicktime engine to have all the codecs you'll ever need by installing the free open source package Perian and the free (closed source) Flip4Mac WMV, which covers the last few.

Arguably, Apple should pre-install both of these packages - or variants thereof.

Now to get back onto the main topic..

One could also argue that the Apple-provided Quicktime player sucks ass big-time - and of course that is very true - but that's easily fixed by installing NicePlayer (also FOSS) - the other route is to ignore all the Quicktime-based solutions, and use something like VLC.

None of the above will stop an uneducated and/or unsuspecting user from clicking their way through an installer (and giving up an administrator password) believing it to install something great/fun/useful. If you try too hard to protect the naive and/or foolish from their own actions when administering the system then you end up taking the route Microsoft have with Vista (and their earlier Windows, each to a lesser extent) -- Are you sure? Are you really sure? Are you really really certain? Can i get a password with that? -- Ah.. Mac users are getting used to giving passwords during installs - bummer. (Mind you, they don't do it as quickly as the average Windows user/administrator can click Ok, Ok, Ok, Ok)

Being honest though, i don't think naivety or foolishness really enter into the equation - after all, it's a social engineering trick driven by the simple male quest for boobies - a somewhat unstoppable force!

http://www.perian.org/index.html#detail

Ah. I suppose I was a bit unclear.

Windows' problem is not a technical one. IIRC, Windows 98 "properly" supported multi-monitor displays out of the box, and the support subsequently improved in Win2k and XP. I used to use Windows in a Multi-Monitor configuration all the time, and agree that it's about on par (if not superior) to Apple these days. There were also various extensions that ATI and nVidia added with their drivers that made the experience a bit smoother (ie. they did a better job of "remembering" where windows are supposed should be placed if an application is quit and re-opened).

Windows' problem is a conceptual one. The whole concept of "root" windows is arguably the Operating System's greatest limitation. Office did away with it in 2000 IIRC, and just gave each document its own window and item on the taskbar. Windows' metaphor of a document originally assumed that a given document will only ever need to interact with documents of the same type within the same application, hence the root windows. Apple took a more "multimedia" approach, giving us applications like ClarisWorks, which is still more or less unparalleled in its ability to seamlessly integrate dissimilar media types and sources into a single document. History has more or less proven that Apple's approach was the better of the two, and the whole "one app does it all" paradigm (ie. Microsoft Works) fell into obscurity.

I'd also peg this as the reason why Apple does drag-and-drop between applications SO much better. Microsoft's system of inter-application objects never really worked properly -- try embedding a not-officially-supported media file into powerpoint, and you'll see what I mean. Apple (and Quicktime especially) handle this much better -- if you install the proper (FOSS!) codec, you can seamlessly embed Flash (FLV) videos into any application that supports the Quicktime framework, which is virtually all of them -- iMovie, Final Cut, iTunes, Keynote, etc.....

Since then, Microsoft's been tweaking their "Window" metaphor to more closely match Apple's, and have been largely successful with it. However, vestiges of the "old way" are still seen in Applications like Photoshop. Because of the menubar issue, Adobe can't efficiently port Photoshop to Windows without ditching the root window (even though the technical limitations requiring the window were removed years ago). In order to do so, each canvas would require its own menubar, which would be hideously impractical unless the number of menu options were significantly reduced so that they'd fit (which wouldn't necessarily a bad thing in its own right).

As is its nature, X has of course had this capability since its inception, but like virtually every other aspect of X, it's so difficult to use and configure, it hardly ever gets used.

Multi-monitor support is one of the coolest and tragically underused technologies out there, and it's useful across the board -- have your source open on one monitor while writing a paper on the other, edit video on one monitor and preview on the other, canvas on one monitor - pallete on the other, code on one monitor, web preview on the other, presentation on one monitor, lecture notes on the other, and the list goes on and on and on.

Big honking LCDs are dirt-cheap these days, and the productivity increase you'll see by adding an extra monitor (or just having one big high-res monitor) are incredible. I've been cursing the heavens for the past few months, as I've been stuck on a tiny 12" 1024x768 PowerBook for the past few months -- great machine, but I find myself considerably less productive without a big screen (or more than one)

You can also use the open-source plugin Perian (http://perian.org/) to give quicktime on OS X support for almost every codec under the sun, including MPEG1 and 2, you needn't pay apple money for it.

Of course your point is still valid - it's easier to add support in Ubuntu.

OS X (10.4) needs Perian to play FLVs.

EFI is a great replacement for a crappy old BIOS, any day of the week. With that said..

I am a new Apple convert. I bought an Intel iMac with the Core 2 duo, and a MacBook with the Core Duo this year. I was a heavy Linux geek and I have been a programmer on MS systems for the past 12 years. I have to say that I love OS X. It is really great.

Seeing things about DRM and Apple makes me a little nervous though. I will quickly sell both my Intel Macs and jump back to Linux if I think Apple is trying to push DRM crap on me. However, so far, that doesn't seem to be the case. For example, there is no crappy MS "activation" crap with OS X. I could use my OS X install DVD's and install OS X on any number of Macs, no questions asked, and most importantly, no crappy "activation". So as of now, it seems that Apple is trusting its users to buy the right number of licenses to install their OS. That is a far cry from what MS does with their activation junk.

Even though I love OS X, I do have some problems with iTMS and iTunes. Out of the box, iTunes doesn't play many non-Apple or non-proprietary formats. Thanks to projects like Perian that can be taken care of, though I personally just use VLC which blows away Quicktime. The biggest problem I have had is that all the TV shows I have bought from iTMS has been trapped in a DRM-only format. I wish Apple would provide a way to transcode to a DVD MPEG-2 format so I can watch the shows on my TV. No, I don't want to have to buy an AppleTV to watch my iTMS-only content. If AppleTV allowed me to watch the Divx/Xvid rips I made of the DVD's that I own, then hell yeah, I would buy it.

So to sum up and get off my soap-box, I love OS X, I am just very weary about where Apple may go in the future WRT DRM. I really hope they do not take the Microsoft path. If so, I will get rid of all my Mac's and switch back to two PC's. One with Ubuntu Linux and one with WinXP. Though I hope I don't have to do that. After 6 months with OS X, I really don't want any other OS. Though, my freedoms are worth more than any OS to me. :-)

If the AppleTV allows you to install QuickTime plugins, you should be all set for video format support between Perian and Flip4Mac.

Try Perian.

I am completely unsurprised that Windows supports Microsoft proprietary formats out of the box. I could equivalently claim that I am disapointed that the Windows instals I have dealt with can't handle Quicktime out of the box, especially H.264. Seems pretty sad for PCs not to be able to cope as well by themselves and have to call on Apple to play a media file... ;)

Many people forget that they have to add codecs to WMP on Windows to get it to run videos encoded with alternate video codcs (DivX, XviD, etc.).

QuickTime for Mac OS X can be similarly augmented:

Simply download Flip4Mac (free) for WMV support and Perian (free) for support for just about everything else.

No need for VLC.

See, the point of switching back to Mac from Linux for recreational desktop use is that I just click on files and they play.

sure, unless you want to play them full screen when the author doesn't want you to - you actually have to pay for quicktime pro for that.

Or unless you want to play ogg vorbis or theora content, you'll need to install additional software.

Or unless you want to play any of these: FLV, Flash Screen Video, or AVIs with AAC, AC3, H.264, MPEG4, or VBR MP3 audio. Which is why there's Perian.

Or you could just install vlc and update it occasionally, since it seems to correctly play more media formats than any other player - and that definitely includes Apple's Quicktime.

If I wanted abuse for not being familiar with some media player minutia, I'd still be in #mplayer trying to figure out what to install to view a WMV.

vlc is the most popular video player amongst geeks for two reasons: one, it was the first player worth half a crap to work on linux; and two, it really is quite excellent. This is also why everyone but you knows what it is. Well, everyone who hasn't deluded themselves into thinking that Quicktime plays everything.

There may be some official flash codec from Adobe that you have to pay for, I don't know, but there are definitely other ways to play flash in quicktime.

Quicktime itself can already play older non-video flash presentations. And the flash video codec that Democracy player is asking you to let it install is Perian, an open source project that integrates libavcodec and a bunch of other video related OSS libraries into a Quicktime component.