Chimoosoft's Mac Picks and Reviews
Picks Archive
This page is part of our archive. For weekly reviews of software and hardware for Mac OS X, please visit our main OS X Picks page.
Perian
- 0.5
- freeware
- 5/7/2007
QuickTime ships with all copies of Mac OS X and provides photo, audio, and movie playback services to many programs and the operating system itself. There are however many movie codecs in use on the web which aren't natively supported by QuickTime. Movies encoded with these refuse to play unless a specialized QuickTime component is installed.
In the past, users had to download and install numerous codecs to gain access to the full range of available movies; Perian simplifies the process. In one fell swoop, freeware Perian adds support for video codecs including AVI, FLV, 3ivX, DivX, Flash Screen Video, MS-MPEG4, Sorenson H.263, Truemotion VP6, and Xvid AVI. It also supports audio codecs such as AAC, AC3 Audio using A52Codec, H.264, MPEG4, and VBR MP3! Nearly every common format is supported with the exception of WMV (windows media) which can be added with the free Flip4Mac.
Installation is simple - drag the Perian.component file to your /Library/QuickTime folder and optionally remove any older components which Perian replaces. Congratulations - your computer will now be able to play almost any video or audio file you throw at it!
An assortment of the best software and hardware for Mac OS X chosen from around the web and briefly reviewed. Our picks are normally updated on a weekly basis, so check back often for more! No, we don't take requests for reviews at this time; the programs are chosen solely by the reviewer and tend to be lesser known but useful titles which deserve a bit more attention.
The companies or individuals producing reviewed software or hardware are in no way affiliated with Chimoosoft. Software reviewed includes freeware, shareware, commercial, and built in to the OS. All software is tested with the most recent shipping version of Mac OS X currently available at the time of the review.
The software reviews above are for programs (a.k.a. software) for the Macintosh OS X (ten) operating system (Mac OS X, or sometimes just osx). A program may also be referred to as a utility or application depending on its intended purpose. Reviews are copyright 2006-2007 by Chimoosoft.