![\"20100505-perian.png\"](\"http:\/\/www.mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-content\/upload\/2010\/05\/20100505-perian.png\")
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\nPerian calls itself \u201cthe Swiss Army knife for QuickTime,\u201d a description that\u2019s pretty much spot-on.<\/p>\n
Technically, Perian is a \u201cQuickTime component\u201d and it\u2019s a preference pane rather than an application (which means that after installing, you\u2019ll find it in System Preferences, not in your Applications folder).<\/p>\n
\n But if the technical details leave you blurry-eyed, all you need to know what what Perian actually does. It gives QuickTime \u2013 the video player that comes built into your Mac \u2013 additional super powers, enabling it to play video files it would otherwise have refused to play.<\/p>\n
That means you can watch AVI files from Windows-using friends. You can watch bits of video in dozens of formats (here\u2019s a list) and it will all Just Work. Once you\u2019ve got Perian installed, you won\u2019t have to worry about it, nor will you be troubled by pesky conversions from one format to another just to view the latest hilarious lolcat.<\/p>\n
Perian is free (so you don\u2019t have to pay for it, though donations are welcome), and it\u2019s open source (so you can take it to pieces to see how it works, if you wish), and it\u2019s a really good idea to have it installed on your Mac. You\u2019ll need 10.4.7 or higher.<\/p>\n
(You\u2019re reading the 4th post in our series, 50 Essential Mac Applications: a list of the great Mac apps we at the Cult value most. Read more.)<\/p>\n
[From 50 Mac Essentials #4: Perian | Cult of Mac<\/cite><\/a>]\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Perian calls itself \u201cthe Swiss Army knife for QuickTime,\u201d a description that\u2019s pretty much spot-on. Technically, Perian is a \u201cQuickTime component\u201d and it\u2019s a preference pane rather than an application (which means that after installing, you\u2019ll find it in System Preferences, not in your Applications folder). But if the technical details leave you blurry-eyed, all … Continue reading 50 Mac Essentials #4: Perian | Cult of Mac<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4RRl-1Kk","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}