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Maury

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 25, 2008
459
26
1st gen Mac Pro, 10.6.2 fully up-to-date, Perian installed and up to date.

At some point in the last few months, MKV's will no longer open in QuickTime, in spite of Perian being installed. When I try to open them, QT starts up, but displays a dialog saying "QuickTime Player cannot open files of this type."

Any advice? I've tried re-installing Perian.

Maury
 
Are the files opening in Quicktime X or in Quicktime Player 7 which is an optional install? QuickTime X doesn't work with Perian and some other codec packs.
 
Are the files opening in Quicktime X or in Quicktime Player 7 which is an optional install? QuickTime X doesn't work with Perian and some other codec packs.

That is the problem then. I suppose I can use 7, can someone tell me how to do this?

Maury
 
.mkv on Quicktime7

Snow Leopard moves quicktime 7 to the utilities folder. To make it the default for .mkv files, select a .mkv file, right click, get info, open with "other" and navigate to Applications/Utilities?Quicktime7
 
djblaze852002's instructions only work if you have QT7 installed; it's optional install on 10.6. If it's not there, here's Apple's instructions on installing it: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3678

On a side note, while I used to be a VLC fan, if you just want to play videos MPlayer OSX Extended has a cleaner interface and on my system uses less CPU, skips around better, handles partly corrupt files better, and handles media served off a slow network connection better. The preferences are also drastically easier to understand, and it has a more Mac-like interface.
 
I'd recommend Mplayer OSX Extended as well, for these sort of files. VLC works as well, but I find Mplayer OSX Extended to have a much nicer interface.

If you have a serious need to play them in QTX, you'll need to install a 'helper' application (just stuff it on your hard drive somewhere), as outlined on Perian's forums. It essentially 'forces' QTX to know that it can play mkvs -- I haven't looked into why/how this happens, I just know it does. :p
 
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