15 April 2011, 11:38

Perian 1.2.2 update adds WebM/VP8 support

The Perian Project development team has released version 1.2.2 of its open source preference pane, sometimes abbreviated as prefpane due to the file extension (.prefpane), for Mac OS X. Perian, often called "The Swiss army knife for QuickTime" by its developers, adds support for several video formats which are not natively supported by QuickTime, allowing it to play back or convert files which would not normally be possible by default.

Perian 1.2.2 features the addition of support for compressed MKV (the Matroska Multimedia Container) tracks and for WebM video. The WebM / VP8 video format is an open, royalty-free media file format for the web that was introduced by Google in May 2010 as part of its new WebM Project. The format does not require a plug-in and allows users to stream high-quality content over the internet, while having a small footprint.

Other changes include FFV1 (FF video codec 1) lossless video support, an internal decoder for Theora and fixes for various bugs from the previous version, including issues related to crashes when importing Matroska files, audio sync problems and rendering semi-transparent text styles. The developers also note that the next planned version will no longer support systems with PowerPC processors and Mac OS X versions prior to 10.6 Snow Leopard, adding that, however, "Maintenance updates may be provided if necessary".

More details about the update, including a list of changes, can be found in the official release announcement and in the version history. Perian 1.2.2 is available to download (direct download) for Mac OS X 10.4.7 or later. Alternatively, users that currently have Perian installed can use the built-in update function by selecting "Check For Updates" under the General tab of Perian's preference pane under System Preferences. Perian source code is released under version 2.1 of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPLv2.1).

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