QuickTime convert .avi to .mov with OS X Mavericks

I have found that the an older version of Quicktime Player 7 that I have installed on my 2011 Macbook Air running Mavericks still plays .avi files without the need for conversion. I also find it upsetting that the newer Quicktime is forcing the conversion upon opening the .avi files. Hope this helps.

I noticed this today, too, and it's very frustrating and takes a really long time to be able to watch the video.

Does anyone know of a way to get QuickTime to NOT convert .avi files to .mov before playing?

Galaxiemusique, Your English is great. Better than my French. Full honours to you.

I have a similar problem since "Upgrading" (what a joke) to OS Mavericks. iTunes plays sound for almost all my videos, but not for others. Format does not appear to be te problem, some MP4 work, some do not.

Any brilliant ideas (apart from microwaving the Apple Mac with sugar and cinnamon) gratefully received.

Message was edited by: dssinclair

I would like to add my voice to those ****** off by this decision by Apple to cripple QuickTime Player even further with Mavericks. Every movie that isn't a .mov, .m4v or .mp4 file has to be converted before viewing now and even small files take ages to convert and load. QT Player won't load all .mp4 files without converting as I have had quite a number of these also require "converting". File of .avi flavour, which is a big chunk of my older library of videos, all now have to be "converted".

Why has Apple done this? With each iteration of OS X, I have found myself using VLC more and more. QuickTime, at least for my purposes, has become even more unusable for a large amount of video from the internet. I'm really angry with Apple and don't understand why they would do this. I am on the verge of changing my defaults to open all video types with VLC and dumping QuickTime Player altogether.

You should download an add on called perain. Perain will allow you to watch many avi's through quicktime. This works a perfectly for a majority of the movies, however there will be some that wll still need converting. I suggest using VLC media player for those videos.

I've got the same problem with the addition that some of my avi files wont' finish the conversion and a message saying there has been an error would appear. This is so frustrating.

I do have Perian, and I just figured out that it's the problem. Apparently QuickTime never natively played AVI files, and using Perian is what allowed me to play them before. But Perian hasn't been updated for Mavericks support (it hasn't been updated in years), so now the files aren't playing.

I hope either Perian updates or someone comes up with a plugin like it to allow AVI files to play in QuickTime. Until then, I'll use VLC (despite it not being as clean as QuickTime 10).

I have this same issue. Now I have switched to using MplayerX which you can get on the App Store. It plays everything, uses a lot less energy than Quicktime (as per Mavericks own activity monitor) and if you are watching a video, but close the app, it will re-open the video where it left off when you open the app again. It's so much better than Quicktime and looks nicer than VLC with no borders on the video.

I hope this helps.

Will try it, will try anything that works!

Thank you

HI GalaxieMusique,

I'm french too, but I'm going to write this post in english so that everyone may understand it 😉

I have the same problem in Mavericks, but I'd say, more important, with QuickLook.

Indeed Quicklook can't read avi movies anymore. Actually it always been the case, but with Perian we were able to fix it. The problem is that Perian is no longer available for Mac OS 10.9....

I'd assume that our only hope is Apple themselves... It would be nice from Apple to creat an add-on for quicklook to be able to preview the avi movies.

In regards with quicktime, you can download QuickTime 7 here:

http://www.01net.com/telecharger/windows/Multimedia/lecteurs_video_dvd/fiches/10 0.html

and ask all the .avi movies to be played by QuickTime 7 and not QuickTime X (included into Mac OS).

Sorry for the english, we french people can make mistakes sometimes 😉

If anyone has a solution for QuickLook, please do not hesitate. This topic is becoming a real mess....

Also, if you want to make MplayerX the default app for all video files, Control click the file and go to "Get Info" then click on the "Open with:" arrow. Select the program you would like to open the file with in the drop down list, in this case MplayerX, Click on the "Change All..." button and click "continue". Now all video files will open with MplayerX.

will this allow QuickLook playing videos as well ???

Thank you “derekreilly”.

I am sorry to say that Apple seems to be morphing into Microsoft. It is totally unacceptable to knowingly release a faulty product in the sure knowledge that the user will have no option but to do the debugging. A few years ago it is precisely this that caused me to leave the MS platform which I had used since its first edition and change to Apple, which was trouble free then.

If I followed this abusive policy in my web based business, I would be out of work in no time flat.

Sooner or later one of 2 things will happen. Either Apple will wake up and stop this cynical practice, or someone will start up another company with a new platform that treats the user with respect. It has happened before, giant companies that mis-treated its clients have disappeared in the past, and not just in the electronic industry.

Yeah, quick look still works.

Thanks derekreilly,

On my iMac Quicklook doesn't work since I've installed Mavericks.

My question was, will MPlayer X installation allow QuickLook play again .avi video file ? 😕

Thank you,