Perian
 | |
| Developer(s) | The Perian Team |
|---|---|
| Initial release | 29 September 2006 |
| Final release | 1.2.3
/ 23 July 2011 |
| Operating system | macOS 10.4.7 or later |
| Platform | PPC, Intel |
| Type | Multimedia framework plug-in |
| License | LGPL |
| Website | perian.org |
Perian was an open source QuickTime component that enabled Apple Inc.’s QuickTime to play several popular video formats not supported natively by QuickTime on macOS.[1] It was a joint development of several earlier open source components based on the multiplatform FFmpeg project's libavcodec and libavformat, as well as liba52 and libmatroska.
It has been featured as the "Download of the Day" on Lifehacker,[2] as well as on several popular blogs including Ars Technica[3] and The Unofficial Apple Weblog.[4]
Project shutdown
On 15 May 2012, the Perian project managers announced on their website that they are shutting down support for the project.[5] In the announcement, they recommended that users look to other products, such as Niceplayer, VLC or MPlayer OS X. They indicated that Perian's source code would be posted online for any developer who wanted to continue with the project. One continuation based on the source code is actively maintained but does not support QuickTime for OS X Mavericks or later.[6][7]
Supported formats
Perian lent support for many combinations of video, audio, text, and container formats to QuickTime, including the following:[8][9]
AV codec support for the following:
- MPEG-4 Part 2
- MS-MPEG4 v1, v2 and v3
- H.263
- H.264
- Flash Screen Video
- Truemotion VP6 & VP3
- HuffYUV
- Xiph Vorbis (in Matroska)
- Snow wavelet video
- DOSBox video
- DTS Coherent Acoustics audio
- Nellymoser Asao Codec
- Windows Media Audio (WMA) v1 & v21
- Dolby Digital
- Fraps
- Indeo 2, 3 and 5
- WebM/VP8
- FFV1
- Theora
Subtitle support for the following:
- (Advanced) SubStation Alpha
- SRT
- SAMI
- VobSub
Container format support for the following:
See also
- Windows Media Components for QuickTime
- Xiph QuickTime Components
- Combined Community Codec Pack (a similar bundle for Windows)
References
- ^ "Perian - A swiss-army knife for QuickTime". Retrieved 2006-10-14.
- ^ Pash, Adam (2006-09-30). "Download of the Day: Perian (Mac)". Retrieved 2006-10-14.
- ^ Biven, Michael (2006-10-04). "Infinite Loop: Perian, bringing playback for all to Apple's QuickTime". Retrieved 2006-10-14.
- ^ Chartier, David (2006-09-30). "Perian - play most video formats in QuickTime for free". Retrieved 2006-10-14.
- ^ Cheng, Jacqui (2012-05-15). ""Swiss Army knife for QuickTime" Perian turning off the lights". Ars Technica. Retrieved 15 May 2012.
- ^ "MaddTheSane perian". Retrieved 2014-04-02.
- ^ "Perian on OS X Yosemite · Issue #11". Retrieved 2016-01-19.
- ^ "SupportedFormats - Perian Quicktime Component". Retrieved 2006-10-14.
- ^ "Perian Support (Version History)". Retrieved 2011-04-13.