Open-source Perian project to end development

#1 Macworld

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Posted 15 May 2012 - 06:16 AM

Post your comments for Open-source Perian project to end development here

#2 SAMBFriend4pso

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Posted 15 May 2012 - 06:41 AM

Sorry to see them stop this great project…
P.S. it does work in ML…1.2.3

#3 leicaman

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Posted 15 May 2012 - 07:01 AM

I certainly hope one of the alternatives can actually help playback of FLV files in OS X. Not that I like FLVs. I much prefer h.264. But the reality is, there are lots of things that are already FLV.

Eric

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

#4 TheBum

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Posted 15 May 2012 - 08:42 AM

Perian is instrumental in ffmpeg for rewrapping MTS files from camcorders to MP4 files. Without it, AC3 tracks don't get processed. Sorry to see it go.

#5 MarkJReed5jau

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Posted 15 May 2012 - 10:05 AM

Maybe Apple will see the light and buy Perian.
It would make all of us users happy.

#6 zarmanto

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Posted 15 May 2012 - 10:43 AM

leicaman, on 15 May 2012 - 07:01 AM, said:

I certainly hope one of the alternatives can actually help playback of FLV...

VideoLan's VLC Player supports FLVs. ( reference )

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#7 zarmanto

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Posted 15 May 2012 - 10:44 AM

MarkJReed5jau, on 15 May 2012 - 10:05 AM, said:

Maybe Apple will see the light and buy Perian.

Not very likely -- but as the article noted, the project is open-source... someone might pick it up when it starts to break. (If you have a mind for programming codecs, that could even be you...

)

#8 Swift2

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Posted 15 May 2012 - 10:50 AM

This is very bad news for me. I work in video post-production in a mixed Windows and Mac environment. We work with all kinds of input, back to 1999-era .avi with MS MPEG 4 v. 1 and 2. Unless Mountain Lion's Quicktime finally supports a Perian-like reading of many files -- 20 is about right -- and the ability to transcode to something other than straight H.264 -- there may be a few Macs for sale. The Mac with Perian is a wonderful machine for our purposes. Without? I don't know.

#9 morespace54

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Posted 15 May 2012 - 11:59 AM

Noooooooo... Perian is really The (only?) Swiss Army knife of video codecs for Mac...

#10 SHRIKEE

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Posted 15 May 2012 - 02:03 PM

So replacing the best plugin ever with a 2nd rate app is their solution?

I want quicktime player!

I hope someone can continue this in the same style and awesome the original team did. And i wouldn't mind buying it either! Say $5US for a license?

#11 Jasonmwa

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Posted 15 May 2012 - 06:36 PM

leicaman, on 15 May 2012 - 07:01 AM, said:

I certainly hope one of the alternatives can actually help playback of FLV files in OS X. Not that I like FLVs. I much prefer h.264. But the reality is, there are lots of things that are already FLV.

Not just FLVs, I am surprised by the myriad of digital video that I've found, been given to work with that is so near proprietary to make the consumer device that records it useless. Perian was truly the Swiss Army Knife for codecs. And while mainstream/purchased video may be H.264 and similar anyone who is trusted with vacation videos will miss this software. It and Quicktime has helped me. Nothing else has come close.

#12 zarmanto

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Posted 16 May 2012 - 06:04 AM

SHRIKEE, on 15 May 2012 - 02:03 PM, said:

So replacing the best plugin ever with a 2nd rate app is their solution?

I want quicktime player!

2nd rate? Not. I've been using VLC Player for longer then Perian has even existed... and while it may not appear to be as polished as QuickTime, (in some ways) it is at least as reliable as QuickTime with Perian, plus, I'm pretty sure that VLC supports more codecs then Perian. Personally, I have had occasional failures with Perian, and I have had occasional failures with VLC... so realistically, no single solution for any given task is ever likely to be perfect. But there's no point in whining just because your "favorite" solution is living on borrowed time.

I've seen many of my own "favorite" solutions come and go... you use them while you can, and move on when they're gone. They're just tools, people.

Now, having said all of that...

SHRIKEE, on 15 May 2012 - 02:03 PM, said:

... And i wouldn't mind buying it either! Say $5US for a license?

Ordinarily, "open-source" means that what you're suggesting simply can't happen, due to license constraints -- but it appears that Perian was distributed under the Lesser GPL, which permits commercial use of the code. So yeah... someone might eventually take you up on that, if the perceived market warrants the effort.

For that matter, it just occurred to me that it may even be possible for Apple to pick it up themselves and release it as a sub-component of QuickTime, at no cost to them -- aside from the time required of a developer to maintain the code, of course. You never know...

This post has been edited by zarmanto: 16 May 2012 - 06:07 AM

#13 BambisMusings

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Posted 16 May 2012 - 06:06 AM

It truly is great that MPEG4 and H.264 have finally come into their own. However, there are still times when Perian come in very handy!

Thank you to the developers of Perian. So sorry to see the run end. I hope some good developers will be able to pick it up and continue the valiant efforts done by the current Perian developers. Would be such a sad thing to lose such a great project....