Flip4Mac
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Flip4Mac is a trademarked brand name for Telestream, Inc.'s proprietary digital media tools for the Macintosh. It is particularly known for being the only QuickTime component for Mac OS X that supports Windows Media Video, although there is non-QuickTime OS X software that supports WMV. They previously offered a free player while charging for their "Pro" and higher featured versions until the release of v3.3 on May 1, 2014 when they began charging for the entry level player.
Windows Media Components for QuickTime
The "Windows Media Components for QuickTime" allows free transparent playback of the most common Windows Media Video and Windows Media Audio formats on Mac OS X inside QuickTime applications and web browsers.
On January 12, 2006, Microsoft discontinued their own Windows Media Player for Mac OS X and began distributing Flip4Mac WMV Player for free instead. Microsoft's website list the product as "Windows Media Components for QuickTime by Flip4Mac" while Telestream just refers to "Flip4Mac".[1]
Alternatives
In 2006, Google sponsored the development of an open source implementation of Windows Media Video 3 playback, as part of the Google Summer of Code (open source code for Windows Media Audio and older versions of WMV already existed). The program succeeded in developing WMV3 support, which was contributed to the ffmpeg project, and other software projects that use ffmpeg benefitted as well. WMV3 support was introduced in both VLC media player 0.8.6 and MPlayer OS X 1.0rc1 in December 2006.
References
- ^ "Flip4Mac released as a Universal Binary". Cnet. 28 July 2006. Retrieved 16 April 2014.