Quicktime/OS X: No Audio For AVI Files? Solution: Perian

.avi files are all over the place in the BitTorrent world.

If your Mac doesn’t seem to be able to play back .avi files with sound, you’re not alone

But the solution is simple.  After a year of this, I finally found it. No longer do I need the VLC player, which was my old work-around for this problem.  

Download Perian, “The swiss army knife of Quicktime components.” 

Problem solved.  I can finally play avi movies and hear the audio in quicktime, itunes etc.

Interestingly enough, some people are saying that AVI is actually supposed to be an obsolete format. From a mac support forum

“AVI is merely an (outdated) container which can include a number of different codecs, not all of which can be made Mac-compatible.”

…And from some random MIT-related site, I found:

“AVI (Audio-Video Interleave) is a rather old file format that Microsoft has been trying to abandon for years in an attempt to get people to switch to their Windows Media format instead. However, the simplicity of AVI and its ubiquity and made it quite popular, so AVIs are still widely used. There are many third-party developers using AVIs, so there is a wide array of AVI codecs available.”

8 Responses to “Quicktime/OS X: No Audio For AVI Files? Solution: Perian”

  1. aszru Says:

    Thanks a lot, you give my Quicktime new live :)

  2. Max Says:

    Wow! That was amazing! I installed it and it magically fixed the problem with my .avi movies!
    Thank you so much!!

  3. Lou Says:

    omfg you are a freakin god! i have been having this issue for so long and everyday i look a little harder to find a solution. I am so glad that you put that seemingly never-ending quest to a halt. Thanks a lot for this helpful post!!

  4. Julie Says:

    Magic! Thank you so much for this solution! Finally all my .avi files work again on Quicktime. I was using DivX to play them which takes so much longer to open up. Thank you so much!!

  5. Mathew Says:

    absolutely fantastic. exactly what i needed. nothing more and nothing less. works like a charm. thank you!

  6. Kattman Says:

    Perfect—I can hear all of my movies again!!!

    Thank You!

  7. Lachlan Says:

    After so much frustration and multiple downloads of codecs it was so pleasing to find that this program just worked.

    well done

  8. Ken Says:

    Got my sound back.

    Thanks!!!

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