Make QuickTime Play More Video Files (replacing Perian)
A great tip for those who want to play Flash Video aka FLV’s on their Mac or those who just generally miss Perian. The tip comes from the comment section of a German blog I found by accident, looking for an alternative to the fabulous Mediathek app (an app that used to be able to download German TV shows from governmental broadcasters like ARD, ZDF, WDR).
The commenter mentions that most YouTube and other videos might already use a codec that is able to play on a Mac, but because the video is encapsulated in a format QuickTime (or better your QuickTime codecs) won’t play, they won’t play in iTunes or QuickTime.
ffmpeg can copy contents from a video track to another video track without reencode. The command goes as follows:
ffmpeg -y -i input\ file.flv -vcodec copy -acodec copy output\ name.mp4
Try this with Walk Off The Earth’s Somebody That I Used To Know. The command runs in mere seconds on my Mac and does indeed produce a compatible video that plays in QuickTime X.
Here’s the German article in case you’re curious.