Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Damn, this hasn't had an update in two years.

and by two years I mean one

We'd need more people working on Perian to speed this up. Dropping ppc and 10.5 should help a bit though.

Chris Forsythe
Perian Project Manager
 
Wow, it's been a while since the last update. Perian is essential for me, without it, no Flac for quicktime.
 
Perian 1.2.2 may have corrected the problem with out-of-sync audio on flash flv, but after installing 1.2.2 on 10.6.7, I notice a problem with playback where .flv video would drop out (become black) during playback, fast forward, and scrubbing. I reverted to Perian 1.2 and the problem disappeared. (this is on a 2010 MBP 17" 2.66 Intel Core I7 with 8GB ram).
 
Just use VLC! It uses the same decoder-libraries (from the ffmpeg-project) as Perian.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html

:D

I don't like VLC interface, but beside this VLC has serious memory leaks. Try to run an MKV all day, all ram is gone, instead Quicktime is always fast with perian. Perian works like a codec so all OS X apps can access these formats not only VLC. Perian+Quicktime is much better solution, player + codec always win.
You can have both installed without problems if you want.
 
-100 :mad:

Heck on the makers of Perian. Just another developer dumping support for true Mac fans who existed in a time before Steve caved to the PC World CPUs after spending nearly a decade touting how great PPC was and how crappy x86 was. It seems developers cannot wait to dump support for older OS versions regardless while Windows machines from 1999 can still run nearly all new software within their CPU capabilities speed-wise (i.e. XP is still supported by nearly all developers a decade later while Mac developers dump support for an OS version that is barely two years old...PATHETIC). The Mac shelf life continues to shrink.... Soon you will need to buy a new computer every year or be left behind by Apple and developers alike while your hardware can run Windows for the next decade. :(

Supporting old OS are a lot of work and you can use newer features found in 10.6 without much work or people blaming devs if x feature don't work (because they are on older os).

Time to upgrade for all, you can keep using old Perian if you are on 10.5 because you have ppc hardware, instead if you are an intel user.... blame yourself for not upgrading, it is just stupid.

Devs can't continue to support different architectures after so many years.

You are just distorting reality because Lion and Snow Leopard can be installed in already quite old hardware, 6 years ago machine can fly with 10.6 with a little of ram, with little cost instead paying a fortune for a new Windows release and working as crap. I think you are just posting this for trolling, otherwise calm down and think about it. Or enjoy Windows, we all have choices.

Dev reply is polite and intelligent... but you could have got this before posting.
In all fairness, if you can find a developer who wants to work on Perian on PPC, and can work with our very small team, then I'd be open to changing our stance.

With 2 very part time developers who actually have real jobs and real lives outside of this, and myself as project manager who has a real job and a real life, I really just don't see the point. 1.2.2 and 1.2.1 will still work in 2 years if they still work today. We're just not going to continue supporting it in 1.3 (or whatever version number I end up being happy with).

Please bear in mind that we have 3 real problems to address here in order for any sort of ppc support to return:

1) Nobody who actually works on perian likes working on this old stuff.

2) A lack of time resources. Did you know that we could have released in November if it hadn't been for supporting 10.5 and ppc? Not even 10.4, but 10.5.

3) A userbase which for the most part moves with updates. Over 80% of our userbase that hits the website is on 10.6. We focus on the 80/20 rule.


Let me explain this a bit further, and how we came to this decision. Essentially 2 and 3 are tied together. We spent a large amount of time on support for something which didn't apply to well over 80% of our user base. That's huge for any kind of software. For an open source project with a very small developer pool, it can cause the project to actually die off. No more perian < perian which is enjoyable to work on.

I can entirely understand your point. I have an old g4 800 mhz imac, I had a nice g4 ibook, a g3 700 ibook, and I had even older machines I won't list. The point is that we have to make the best choices for us currently, and for our users. I do respect older versions of os x and hardware, but not at the cost of what we're doing now.

I post this not looking for a response, but as an explanation. Concisely put, we have almost no motivation to continue working on 10.5 or ppc.

Chris Forsythe
Perian Project Manager
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8F190 Safari/6533.18.5)

So I can watch my anime collection without problems now? Let's hope so!

This!
 
This is great news, as it gives me the possibility to put my old VHS and DVD avi-rips into a quicktime-container and import those into iTunes without having to renecode.

Now, if the developers would release a version of their plugin for jailbroken iOS-devices...

vSpacken
 
Perian is one of those things you forget you have until you use a Mac without it. I mean that as a high compliment. I promote Perian to people as if I wrote it. lol
 
This is great news, as it gives me the possibility to put my old VHS and DVD avi-rips into a quicktime-container and import those into iTunes without having to renecode.

Now, if the developers would release a version of their plugin for jailbroken iOS-devices...

vSpacken


We're not likely to do that unless we get another developer who works on that specifically.
 
Perian!

Thanks Perian People for updating this excellent asset to the Mac community!

I have mixed feelings about the dropping of PPC myself but honestly - my G5 blew up late last summer and I'm not bothering to get it repaired. There's no point. Even when it was running its best its performance was a fraction of my Intel Mac and used far more electricity to boot.

My Corei7 iMac does everything that I need a Mac do, better than my old G5 and if they opted to stop support for it I could always go Windows 7 native on it or Linux or something.

With my G5 the components to repair it would be so expensive I could buy a whole new Mac (that would be MUCH faster and better).

I sympathize with the one decrying the loss of support but it hasn't been two years since the Intel switch, it's been five years, four months and five days since those CoreDuo iMacs were announced.

No computer manufacturer supports hardware as if it was new with constant support for over five years.

The life of Intel Windows based PCs in the industry has a three year buy-use-replace cycle. The idea is that corporate america has a machine covered for three years with an extended warranty and when it expires they unload the pc so they are not saddled with expensive repairs. It's time, get with the new.

And the writing was on the wall when in 2003 Jobs promised there would be a 3 ghz G5 and IBM failed to deliver.

The other thing is - it's better that people start thinking of computers as toasters. When your toaster wears out do you get bummed out talking about the old days of toast technology and are upset that the new ones that toast faster and more efficiently aren't as nice as the older toasting technology? No! Get over it. It's not a prized heirloom, it's a freaking toaster. A computer is no different. You use it and it wears out. End of story.


Toasters people, toasters! Stylish toasters, but they're toasters!
 
Last edited:
Chris -

Wow, thank you for the explanation and responding in the forums. So rare to have an open source dev actually participate - at least on Mac Rumors. BTW - I am being sincere.

I agree with Chris and can understand where The Tick is coming from. I do disagree with Tick a bit because my Mac hardware still tends to last longer than PC hardware and in general, the OS and software built for that system tend to run just as fast on day 1900 as they did on day 1. Granted, if I install a piece of software that came out 3-4 years later that software won't run as fast on the older machine but that has always been the case.
 
Chris -

Wow, thank you for the explanation and responding in the forums. So rare to have an open source dev actually participate - at least on Mac Rumors. BTW - I am being sincere.

Thank you. :)


I agree with Chris and can understand where The Tick is coming from. I do disagree with Tick a bit because my Mac hardware still tends to last longer than PC hardware and in general, the OS and software built for that system tend to run just as fast on day 1900 as they did on day 1. Granted, if I install a piece of software that came out 3-4 years later that software won't run as fast on the older machine but that has always been the case.

I think you misunderstood what I said. I didn't say that the hardware was any slower. Note that my g4 imac is still in my office as an itunes server. :)
 
-100 :mad:
... It seems developers cannot wait to dump support for older OS versions regardless while Windows machines from 1999 can still run nearly all new software within their CPU capabilities speed-wise (i.e. XP is still supported by nearly all developers a decade later while Mac developers dump support for an OS version that is barely two years old...PATHETIC). The Mac shelf life continues to shrink.... Soon you will need to buy a new computer every year or be left behind by Apple and developers alike while your hardware can run Windows for the next decade. :(

Another difference with win machines - you have to specially install XP on a modern machine, most don't sell outright XP as the "normal" setup. XP also is based on the same hardware chipset as Win7 (e.g. Intel). Window machines normally tend to last about 3-5 years of their useful life before the average person considers upgrading.

By Jan 2007, no Mac was being sold by Apple that was PPC and the first Intel Mac was available in Jan 2006. So hardware wise, your PPC is over 4 years old at the least, if not 5+. From a software standpoint, Apple stopped supporting PPC with it's OS in Jan 2009. Even from a software stand point then you have to be running software that is 3 years old. I think most people would say it's time to upgrade.

Last point, you bring out the XP still supported argument like it is a good thing. My impression is that many consider it a necessary evil, not a good thing. The average consumer likes it because Vista sucks(ed) and the some still aren't sure about Win 7 but many are going there. The tech side don't like it but need to support it because they sunk millions in enterprise software which didn't update to Vista because Vista sucks(ed) thus many are still trying to get upgraded software to run on Win 7. They all bought new boxes and want new and better software, they are just stuck with old stuff.
 
This whole thing is about perspective.

I think one thing that needs to be mentioned here is that Windows and the Microsoft world is entirely different from the Mac world. Businesses stick with older OSes like XP because they have thousands of computers running daily a thousand programs which need to run reliably in order for the business to carry out its work. Converting one computer from XP to Vista or XP to 7 is a no-brainer, but multiply the computers by 1000 and the programs that have to run PERFECTLY by 1000 and it's a little bit of a different picture. The reason that Microsoft isn't moving everything to 7 as quickly as Apple is moving people to Intel or 10.6 is simply because there are just so many people who are still stuck with the status quo because of cost in money and in time. My employer upgraded from IE 6 to IE 8 on our XP machines just last month, presumably so our web applications would work.

Furthermore, I'm typing this on a PowerBook G4, released in 2005, running Leopard. I've also got an older PowerBook G4 from January 2003 also running Leopard. Yesterday, I was able to install the newest Security Update and Safari update to both machines. Earlier this week, I updated Office 2008 on both machines. I mean, 2003 was eight years ago. Kudos to Apple and Microsoft for even bothering to support PPC.

I don't use Perian much, but I'm glad they're moving on to Intel code. When Apple releases Lion, Leopard will likely stop being supported and I'll move on. In the meantime, I'm thankful that I can have a machine that is older than a second grader that can run the most up-to-date security software Apple and Microsoft offer.

Small victories.
 
For anime , mplayer extended > VLC

embarassingvlc.png
There's the problem. You're using Windows! :D
 
I have a .mkv and three different .srt subtitle files. If I open the .mkv in QuickTime+Perian:
- I see all subtitles at once, one over the other
- movies seem to "load", similarly as youtube videos do. In other words, I can't jump to a random spot on the timeline and watch it from there until the movie is loaded up to that point

What's up with that? Makes watching movies for me totally useless... :S
 
I have a .mkv and three different .srt subtitle files. If I open the .mkv in QuickTime+Perian:
- I see all subtitles at once, one over the other

I bet the mkv has a subtitle built in. Try renaming the srt to something else and reopening the mkv. If it still has subs, there's nothing much we can do about that.

- movies seem to "load", similarly as youtube videos do. In other words, I can't jump to a random spot on the timeline and watch it from there until the movie is loaded up to that point

We have an faq entry about this if you want specifics. Essentially it's the difference between how mkv is formatted versus what quicktime expects. We cannot change this.

We're working on ways to improve this, but it's just not going to fly very well in the end.

We'll support mkv the best we can though.

Chris
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.