3. QuickTime Won't Play AVI Files Problems and Solutions
Playing Avi Files On Mac
I have a number of movie files that will not open and play with my Quicktime player even though they are .avi files...Should I download a file converter to change the AVI file format, say, mov. or download a codec to decode AVI files on MacBook.
What Media Player Plays Avi Files For Mac
Although VLC media player plays most multimedia files, as you see, there are still groups of people complain of incapability of video playback when opening AVI files. Actually, AVI is a container video format which generally contains a number of audio, video, and subtitle streams. VLC, AnyMP4 Tipard Blu-ray Player for Mac, etc., can play AVI files on Mac directly. Moreover, you can also convert AVI to QuickTime supported MOV files and play it on Mac directly. Why is my AVI file only playing audio? There are 2 reasons for AVI not playing audio. Mac Media Player is an all-in-one free media player from Macgo. Almost all kinds of media formats, like videos, audios and photos can be played with it. Also, it can play stream movies on iPhone / iPad / iPod touch as long as AirX function available. This picture is for Panasonic S68 DVD Player. It says that if you want to play AVI on Panasonic S68 DVD Player, the file extension has to be ‘.DIVX,’ ‘.divx,’ ‘.AVI,’ or ‘.avi’, otherwise, you can’t play AVI files on Panasonic DVD Player.
This is because AVI codec, which is a bit complicated. Put it simply, you need to know how the AVI file is coded, and download the right codec to decode and reencode AVI video on Mac computer. Most AVI videos use Xvid, DivX and 3ivX codecs. It is a huge task to figure out codec your AVI files use and download the proper codec to open and watch AVI video on MacBook. If you are a person who struggle with technical things, this way is not recommended.
To realize a flawless AVI playback experience on your Macbook, you can install QuickTime component Perian. Perian helps QuickTime play AVI on MacBook, also other formats MKV, FLV, MTS, DivX, WMA and more. After being installed, Perian works automatically when playing AVI files with QT in MacBook. However, you need to note that QuickTime won’t play all media types, including AVI files with codecs unaccepted by QT. What's more, Perian is no longer under development and it fails to work with QuickTime 10 or later. So, we suggest you to convert AVI to MP4, MOV QuickTime supported formats.
Author: Candice Liu | Updated on May 25, 2020