For general versatility, VLC is a must-have app for all computer users, MplayerX is really giving it a run for it’s money, but for overall media center functionality XBMC is great. Thanks to everyone who recommended this, this may be my new favorite video player! This is definitely another worthwhile choice for watching HD video on the Mac, and it’s available free on the Mac App Store. Low and behold, MPlayerX works wonderfully to play MKV files, and the interface closely matches QuickTime Players black minimalist theme. I hadn’t used MPlayerX before, but after several of our readers recommended it in the comments I downloaded the app and gave it a try. Perian is quite good, but some users encounter strange issues with OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion, so this may not be the best solution until Perian gets updated with full support for the latest versions of Mac OS X. It’s easy to install and sits as a preference panel, and once it’s installed there is nothing extra required to use, just open the once unsupported videos in QuickTime Player. ![]() Perian is a third party Quick Time component that adds support for a huge variety of video formats (including MKV) to Apple’s very own QuickTime Player. Nonetheless, it still plays MKV files quite well, if you’re going to use it drag and drop the MKV video onto the Plex icon to load the movie, otherwise trying to navigate through Plex’s confusing new menus will likely leave you frustrated and lost. Although it is generally a great media center app, the most recent update took a strange turn and the interface is more confusing than it needs to be. Plex is very similar to XBMC and works as well. To get the most out of XBMC, copy any MKV video files to the Movies directory in the users home folder and you’ll be able to quickly find them within XBMC. XBMC is another good app to play MKV video, it’s simple interface focuses on media use and it makes a great media console in general. Some users report performance issues with playing MKV from VLC, but I’ve had no such problems. mkv movies, it’s a worthwhile app to have on any Mac. VLC 2 recently came out with some pretty significant changes, and even if you don’t plan on using it to play. The first recommendation is VLC, which will play just about any video or audio file thrown at it and MKV is no exception. Ultimately which is the best is up for debate, but since they’re all free there is no reason not to try them all and discovering which is the best for your specific needs. There is also a command line version of the app which you can script, say, when a new file is detected it will automatically convert it, so in theory everything would be automatic, but the last time I tried this I found the CLI didn’t fully support DTS audio conversion unlike the GUI version.We’ll cover five excellent free MKV video players that will work on the Mac, some are just general movie player apps and some are full-fledged media center applications that will do far more than just playing HD video formats. Once complete, just drag it in to iTunes (you could place a folder action on the destination folder so that this happens automatically). ![]() Now (and this is great) you can add the process to a queue (option under the file menu) – you should select ‘Video-MPEG4’ and tick 64 bits chunk offset on the addto queue dialogue. Press shift-cmd-m and search for the meta data, add it, then it asks you to choose a thumbnail image (your iTunes library is gonna look great (not to mention scrolling though it on Apple TV). Now simply open the MKV and it asks you which tracks you would like to use and add the video and at least one audio track (multiple audio tracks, subtitles and chapters are supported too) and then hit ok. I convert to iTunes so I ticked ‘AC-3 audio to AAC’, downmix audio to ‘Dolby Pro Logic’, and 128kbps. It’s also free (well, distributed on a GNU GPL v2 license), it can be found on google code and the app is so easy to use AND it fetches meta data and thumbnails from an online database too!!–more–>īefore starting encoding, open the settings to set up the audio conversion.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |