I'm using Perian 1.2.3 on an early 2000's macbook running os x 10.5.8. As of today for some reason my .MKVs are playing as a white screen with subtitles and audio only. Help pls!
MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
The people at Perian have ended development of the app.
Find an old copy of VLC player to view your files.
I have VLC, it lists the files as UNDFD as it doesn't have the correct Codec.
It could be a 'difficult' form of Matroska file. FYI Matroska is just a container like MOV or AVI, and some mkv have the video encoded with Real Video Codec (RV9 RV10). Perian+QT can't decode this, but VLC will play .mkv files just fine on OS X, as long as they don't use H.264!
It's a bit of a lottery until Matroska decide to support the Apple platform. I have found this:
http://mkv4mac.free.fr/index.php?lang=en&p=lec
which may help.
But there may be another workaround: 1. Get Info the mkv file
2. Change to extension to wmv. Save as wmv and that could work better.
Recently, a poster (ZachP14) suggested this:
"There's a program called Plex that runs .mkv files awesome on my 2.0 ghz macbook."
Maybe worth a try?
More information here:
ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matroska
Is this happening with new files or ones that previously worked? If they previously worked then in theory they should continue to work, you could try the usual tricks of rebooting, trying it in a fresh empty user account, etc.
It would probably be helpful to run a tool like Media Info which will examine the file and report that format it is in and what video and audio codecs have been used. This may help picking a player that can successfully play it. It may also help diagnosing an incorrect file extension, Windows users are notorious for using the wrong file extension on video files.
See https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo/Download/Mac_OS
On a related topic, there is some opinion that of the three main video container formats - .mov, .avi, and .mkv that MKV is by far the most technically advanced. I personally feel QuickTime (which is a broader term than just file formats) has become less and less of a superior solution. I therefore would see some argument for Apple to completely switch over to using MKV as a container format but I do not see this ever happening.
Perian Problems - MKV
