QuickTime 7.2 is a great software application that allows users to enjoy movies and television shows on their Macintosh computer. However, there are some issues that can occur when playing AVI files. One such issue is that the video playback may not work correctly. To fix this issue, you will need to use a third-party software application called Fix AVI Playback Bug in QuickTime 7.2. This application can help you fix the problems that may occur when playing AVI files on your Macintosh computer.
On first blush this is a really good thing, but it causes some serious issues for those of us who have added third party codecs to QuickTime in the past to make such things work. Put simple, the update wipes out all of these third party codecs, and replaces them with the QuickTime standard components. These components of course provide the same playback, but they also come with their own set of issues.
Apparently, with QuickTime 7.2, startup to playback an Xvid/MP3 AVI takes almost 15 seconds, pushing the CPU to 50% the whole time. When you’re used to paging through clips in FrontRow (which fires up QuickTime to play the thumbnails for each film), 15 seconds is a really long time.
The solution is to reinstall the codecs required to playback the AVI(s) separately from the vanilla QuickTime components. Contrary to what I’ve said previously, I would recommend Perian. Either I had a buggy install that one time, or it was something weather related. Either way, I’ve been using it for several months now and it works great. You can download it here.
Once downloaded, the DMG should prompt you and automatically mount itself.
Double click on the “Perian.prefPane” file. You will want to select “Install for All Users”, after which you will need to enter your password (twice). Once Perian is installed, you will be presented with the preference pane.
Unlike previous versions of Perian, which required manual fiddling with .component files, this latest version doesn’t require any more steps to install than what we’ve already outlined.
And that’s all there is to it! QuickTime should now play any movie file at full quality, doing its little startup dance in record time (with minimal strain on the CPU).
