Have an .mkv movie file? Wondering what the heck it is and how to play it?
High Definition movies in 720 or 1080 pixel width format are often encoded and packaged as a Matroska format video with a .mkv file extension.
Apple QuickTime doesn’t handle this format natively so you have to add a package handler for mkv files to QuickTime to play .mkv files.
A quick and easy solution to how to play .mkv files is to install Perian, which makes QuickTime play .avi, .flv, and .mkv files and handles many different and popular encoding formats for video.
Remember to fully quit and re-launch QuickTime after installing Perian (don’t just close the QuickTime window, it’s still running until you Quit the program). This allows QuickTime to reload its list of handled formats and encodings.
When double clicking on an .mkv file to play it, you may have to wait until the entire film is buffered in QuickTime before it will play smoothly. You can tell the progress of the buffering by looking at the grey timeline bar that is inching across the bottom left of the QuickTime window, starting near the 00:00 time marker. This is one of the oddities of the .mkv Matroska video package format. Don’t ask me why this happens, just keep this in mind next time you want to watch an mkv video on your Mac use Perian.
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November 7, 2008 at 5:33 am
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June 15, 2008 at 4:02 am
mussafir
HI. You can also download VLC for Mac which also can play mkv files. Thanks for the write up.
July 13, 2008 at 11:28 am
Donna
Thank you so much! I tried the initial suggestion of installing the A52 Codec, but the audio didn’t work until I downloaded Perian.
July 19, 2008 at 2:18 pm
tristam
The smoothest playback I get with mplayer.
August 3, 2008 at 2:02 pm
sal
I finally got the audio to work on quicktime. Many thanks!
September 1, 2008 at 1:56 am
Shadxow
Hey thanks for the product, worked great except for one problem. Any one else not able to play flv files in a flash player or Adobe Flash CS3 for that matter? I mean I can open the flv files with no problem in quicktime now but I cannot open them in flash or a flash player. That and the video playback in quicktime sort of freezes a little but the audio keeps playing.
September 20, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Ryan Miller
Thanks! Worked perfect!
September 30, 2008 at 4:21 pm
hsantos
Funcionou na perfeição. Sem espigas!
February 20, 2009 at 10:02 pm
ted Li
thank you very much, it is great, thank you again.
April 10, 2009 at 11:44 pm
hbk2369
Mussafir, VLC is fine for most items.
However, VLC cannot smoothly play 1080p files on a Macbook, while Plex can do it very well.
August 26, 2009 at 3:52 am
neeraj
Thanx a lot!!!
Its tooo good….
September 1, 2009 at 1:51 am
Sander
The reason why Quicktime is slow when opening mkv movies, is the fact that quicktime needs to have the whole movie buffered for fast searching through the movie. Quicktime doesn’t work with indexes.
I like the minimalistic feeling when watching series or movies windowed on a mac !
September 3, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Alex
To use Perian on 10.6 Snow Leopard is fine.
See here:
http://forums.cocoaforge.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=20827
July 26, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Natalie Schawel
Thank you, this is perfect! VLC doesn’t work for Mac OSX 10.4.11, so this is ideal. Thanks again!
August 20, 2010 at 8:42 am
David
It worked perfectly. Thank you
July 4, 2011 at 3:54 pm
Chris
This was awesome - thanks!!
December 28, 2011 at 9:58 am
robert
this is perfect! thanks a million
December 29, 2011 at 10:31 pm
Bob Gyoza
Downloaded and installed within 30 seconds. A true thing of beauty. Many thanks.
February 13, 2012 at 12:22 am
Fremen
VLC had very jerky playback of high bit-rate x.264 in MKV container.
Perian immediately fixed this issue. I think VLC can’t handle too high bit-rates like QuickTime can.
Thanks,
//DJF
June 11, 2012 at 1:37 pm
Dan
Hi,
I have a USB flash with .mkv movies, but when I plug the flash in my mac it does not show anything (it looks like empty flash). Is this because I need to download a mkv player?
August 31, 2012 at 1:40 am
happybabyboy
Just google search Step by step guide on how to play MKV, HD MKV files on PS3/Xbox 360/iPad/iPhone/Samsung/Android/QuickTime/Zune/PowerPoint/BlackBerry/Nokia and more.
You will find an All-in-one Solution on How to Play MKV files and Edit MKV Movies
It solves:
Convert MKV, HD MKV to MP4 to helps play MKV on PS3, PSP, Zune, Wii, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Apple TV, Android, Sansung, BlackBerry, YouTube, Facebook and more
Convert MKV, HD MKV to WMV/AVI to helps play MKV on Xbox 360, Windows Media Player, and Windows Movie Maker etc
Convert MKV, HD MKV to MOV to play MKV on QuickTime, Mac, Wii and more
Convert MKV, HD MKV to DV for importing MKV to iMovie, Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express
Convert MKV, HD MKV to MPEG-1 for inserting MKV to PowerPoint or burning MKV to VCD
Convert MKV, HD MKV to MPEG-2 to burn MKV to DVD
Convert MKV, HD MKV to 3GP/3GPP to play MKV on mobile phones like Nokia
Convert MKV, HD MKV to FLV, VOB, WebM, ASF, MPG, SWF etc to play MKV anywhere