Part 1: Compatible Video/Audio Formats for QuickTime Player
QuickTime supports a lot of media formats and codecs, with many more coming all the time. Take a look at the following video and audio formats and codecs list according to Apple official page.
Media Type |
File Formats |
Codecs |
Video |
QuickTime Movie (.mov), MPEG-4(.mp4, .m4v), MPEG-2 (OS X Lion or later), MPEG-1, 3GPP, 3GPP2, AVCHD (OS X Mountain Lion or later), AVI (Motion JPEG only), DV |
MPEG-2 (OS X Lion or later), MPEG-4 (Part 2), H.264, H.263, H.261 |
Audio |
iTunes Audio (.m4a, .m4b, .m4p), MP3, Core Audio (.caf), AIFF, AU, SD2, WAV, SND, AMR |
AAC (MPEG-4 Audio), HE-AAC, Apple Lossless, MP3 |
Part 2: Recommended Audio/Video Settings
There are still many other factors that may result in playback failure, with the resolution, frame rate settings being the typical example. To help you out, the following rules of thumb are just the recommended parameter settings that QuickTime supports for playback flawlessly.
Video Codec Settings |
H.264, Photo-JPEG |
Audio Codec Settings |
AAC, IMA 4:1 |
Resolution |
Media Resolution Quality: H264 (640x480) |
Frame Rate |
Use a frame rate of 10 fps or 15 fps |
Bit Rate |
Don't forget to provide good video/audio quality - 2-5 Mbps and 196 kbps, stereo |
Part 3: Solution to Play Video/Audio Format Files Unsupported by QuickTime
For the video and audio files beyond the above-mentioned list, QuickTime will go on strike. Fortunately Apple users may call for its plugin for help, like the popular Perian that is known as a free, open-source QuickTime component, letting you play any media file type you want once it is installed. Unfortunately, a great number of people complained that perian is incompatible with Mac Mavericks, let along the Yosemite, and want an alternative solution. In request for this, we have screened out some useful third-party video converter software to solve the problem - MacX Video Converter Pro is the most remarkable one to change the file into QuickTime video format, or convert QuickTime to MP4.
It is the Swiss-army knife, letting you convert any videos like MKV, WMV, 3GP, MTS, AVCHD, FLV, AVI, etc to MOV, MP4, MP3, etc. You just load the unreadable video, choose the MP4 or MOV format from "Mac General Video" and then click "RUN" button to start the video conversion. Just three steps, you can finish the video conversion and therefore playback any video in QuickTime. What's more, you can also DIY your converted video file like crop, trim, add watermark or add subtitle to better suit your QuickTime player.
