Reader Jon Nunes has old movies and a new operating system that don’t see eye to eye. He writes:
I have a lot of old .avi movies from the days when I was using a Windows PC. I’d like to play them on my Mac but I can’t seem to when running Mavericks. What should I do?
Quicktime Player Avi Files
AVI, Audio Video Interleaved, is a multimedia container format introduced by Microsoft as part of its Video for Windows software. To open AVI files, your player must support all of these codecs. But Mac's built-in video player - QuickTime is unable to recognize and play AVI files. Yodot AVI Repair is the best application which is developed in particular to securely repair AVI files that are not playable in QuickTime Media Player. With the inclusion of powerful repair algorithms, the user can easily fix the AVI files and make them playable again on QuickTime or other media players. QuickTime can play various media files including audios, videos and images. It also supports various formats though MOV is the standard file used for QuickTime videos. AVI is also supported by the player but still some AVI files can’t be played directly using the basic free QuickTime player. Mac OS is Apple’s dedicated OS for Macbooks and other devices and is a platform on which several AVI players can be downloaded. The following is a list of the top 10 such AIV players for Mac. VLC Media Player. Macgo Media Player for Mac.
You’re correct that QuickTime Player X is incapable of playing .avi movies, but then it never did natively. Instead you’d have to install something like the Perian QuickTime plugin, which allowed you to play a wide variety of video files, including the many formats gathered under the .avi umbrella. Regrettably the team behind Perian has chosen to halt development. In addition, the foundation underlying QuickTime has changed with OS X Mavericks so that these older plugins no longer work.
Quicktime Player Avi Files Windows 10
You’re not entirely out of luck, however. VideoLAN’s free VLC Media Player can play these files. Just launch the application and, in the resulting VLC media player window, drag in the movie you want to watch and it will start playing (see image above).
But suppose you’d like to watch your movies outside of VLC? I’d suggest converting them to a format that’s compatible with Mavericks—MPEG-4 (H.264) for example. VLC can output a converted file but I’ve found the results of its work a little iffy—it can drop frames, making for stuttering video.
There are multiple tools available for doing this conversion (some which are simply copies of others) but I wouldn’t bother paying for one. Instead, download a copy of the free HandBrake. Among its many talents, HandBrake can convert these movies into a format playable on all Apple devices.
To do the job launch HandBrake and in the navigation sheet that appears, select the movie you want to convert. If the presets pane isn’t showing click the Toggle Presets tab. From the list of presets on the right choose the one you’d like to use for your movie (Apple TV 2, for example). Click the Start button and HandBrake will set about converting the movie for you.