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
Pingback from alopix’ blog » Blog Archive » Endlich HD-Filme
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!