Perian is a free, open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats.

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!

Is it possible to use hardware acceleration for H.264?

No — this isn't possible or supported in Mac OS X. Apple has not allowed access to the hardware.

I thought Perian allowed me to play MPEG files, but it can't. Why?

The term MPEG covers more than just a file type; it also defines audio and video compression methods. Perian allows playback of these audio and video compression techniques, but it does not allow the ability to open the MPEG file format. This is due to limitations within QuickTime itself, and we cannot solve it until Apple designs a better interface. See our rdar on the subject.

Will there be a version of Perian for the iPhone?

Unfortunately no, the iPhone does not have QuickTime. Since Perian is a third party component for QuickTime, we would need the iPhone to have QuickTime before we could get Perian onto the iPhone.

What if QuickTime for the iPhone ends up in a future update?

We are concerned that the iPhone, while a great device, is just too slow to play the type of files that you would use Perian to play.

1.1.3 - Monday, Dec 15, 2008

• Enabled Indeo 2/3 decodecs
• Added external idx/sub (VobSub) support
• Added support for H.264 and H.263 in FLV containers
• Apple's decoder now handles Baseline/Main Profile H.264
• Fix inconsistent importing for multi-channel audio
• Reduced memory usage for packed streams
• Added sanity checks on all preferences
• Enabled hack to show subtitles in Front Row
• Fixed negative values in SSA \frz tag
• Fixed VSFilter bug-compatibility for \an

1.1.2 - Monday, Oct 20, 2008

• Fixed update checker never running - this version requires a manual install
• Enabled frame-dropping on AppleTV
• Fixed some frames being lost in AVCHD/.mp4 with newer versions of QuickTime
• Fixed another ffmpeg crash on G3s

1.1.1 - Sunday, Sep 29, 2008

• H.264 in AVI fixed
• Some anamorphic AVI files are now supported
• Performance problems due to PIC fixed with Xcode 3.1
• Incorrect frame skipping on H.264 intra frames fixed
• Better character set detection
• The update checker is now much more polite
• Several parsing and rendering bugs with subtitles fixed
• Player freezing while loading subtitles with embedded fonts fixed
• Audio fixed for some older MKV files with AAC/FLAC
• Strange values in MKV chapters or video sizes are handled better
• Initial support for SAMI subtitles added
• Worked around a QuickTime bug (#5770288) causing frames to be lost during export
• New codecs: DosBox ZMBV, VP6+Alpha, Nellymoser ASAO
FFmpeg:
• Crashing on PPC G3 fixed
• Fraps decoding artifacts fixed

1.1 - Wednesday, Feb 6, 2008

• 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

1.0 - Friday, June 29, 2007

• Added support for Matroska/mkv
• Integrated a52codec
• Added subtitle support
• Added support for .gvi (avi wrapper from Google Video)
• Changed distribution to a Preference Pane in order to make installation simpler and configuration possible in the long term.
• Changed installation directory from /Library/QuickTime to ~/Library/QuickTime.
• Fixed avi/flv over http
• Added support for Windows Media Audio in AVI
• Added support for MPEG-1 layer 2 audio
• Added support for the ADPCM audio codec in FLV
• Added Vorbis decoder
• Added support for Fraps FPS1
• Added support for VP3
• Added support for i263
• Added support for HuffYUV
• Added support for MPEG-1/2 video in AVI/MKV
• Fix opening AVIs with VBR audio for which there is no available decoder
• Fix crash with DVI ADPCM
• Fix multichannel audio descriptions in AVI
• Faster opening of AVI files
• High profile H.264 support
• Full MPEG-4 video support in .mp4
• Altivec & SSE2 colorspace conversion
• Fix DV in type 1 AVIs

0.5 - Friday, September 29, 2006

• Initial Release