Oct 27

Quicklook Video allows OSX Finder to display thumbnails, previews and metadata for most types of video files.

QuickLook and Spotlight on OSX 10.9 and later understand a limited number of media files – mostly only MPEG audio and video codecs within MPEG container files. This package adds support for wide range of other codecs and “non-native” media file types, including .asf, .avi, .flv, .mkv, .rm, .webm, .wmf etc.

20 Responses to “Quicklook Video”

  1. Neil christie Says:

    I am getting the thumbnails but it’s not playing .asf of .flv files.

  2. Marginal Says:

    Neil,
    You need a video player app (e.g. VLC or MPlayerX) to play these video files.

  3. Neil christie Says:

    I’ve got VLC.

    Thought/hoped the plugin was meant to show moving, not just still, previews of the file.

  4. Philip Says:

    Installed the package on OSX 10.10.1, but my .mkv thumbnails remain unchanged.

    I tried a reboot. Still no change.

    Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

  5. Marginal Says:

    Philip,

    Please post a bug report at https://github.com/Marginal/QLVideo/issues .

  6. Philip Says:

    Will do. Thank you.

  7. mudsak Says:

    I have vlc installed as well, but all I get is screenshots.

  8. Mono Says:

    How to uninstal this plugin? Should solve the problem but made it wayyyy worst:/

  9. Marginal Says:

    Mono,

    Sorry to hear that. To uninstall follow the instructions here: https://github.com/Marginal/QLVideo#uninstall

  10. Dan The Man Says:

    Hi Marginal,

    I appreciate for you effort to replace – at least partially – what Perian has provided in earlier versions of OS X. Now that Perian does not work in OS X 10.9 and above, what would it need to make a video quick look preview of AVI files? Is this generally possible in Yosemite or is the Apple’s new video foundation lacking API support to do that?

    Thanks.

  11. shape Says:

    is Perian supposed to provide quicklook previews of additional file formats? I had QuickLook previews of webm files on Lion (10.7.5) with v1.3.2 but after upgrading to 10.8.5 i no longer have webm previews. They play fine in Quicktime and VLC though. I posted on Perian’s Github page too but didn’t see many responses there, so i figured i’d check here too 🙂

  12. Marginal Says:

    It’s not currently possible to get playable QuickLook previews of AVI, WEBM, MKV etc files under 10.9 & 10.10.

    Perian still works under OSX 10.9 & 10.10 for QuickTime 7 and other applications that use the QuickTime APIs.
    However QuickLook and QuickTime X no longer use the QuickTime APIs – they now use the AVFoundation APIs, and there’s no documented way of extending AVFoundation to support more containers and codecs.

    There’s some discussion of the issue here:
    https://github.com/Marginal/QLVideo/issues/3

  13. JOHN CLARK Says:

    WILL THIS WORK WITH 32 BIT QUICKTIME CODECS? I NEED TO BE ABLE TO PREVIEW ANIMATION PNG ETC.

  14. yvette bernklau Says:

    I’m a newbie at this:
    is Quick Look recommended for viewing jpegs
    on MacPro 10.7.5?
    thanks,
    Yvette

  15. Marginal Says:

    @JOHN CLARK:
    NO. IT DOESN’T “WORK WITH” QUICKTIME CODECS, 32 BIT OR OTHERWISE.

    @yvette bernklau:
    QuickLook on OSX 10.7 does an adequate job of viewing jpegs.

  16. Alex Says:

    works fine with OS X 10.11.1
    thanks!

  17. Neil christie Says:

    @Alex what files type(s) are you able to view. I’m finding some .mpegs and .mov files do play but some don’t.

  18. Oxyer Says:

    Hi ,thank you for providing this wonderful plugin! It works well with osx10.11.13.
    but it still have some tiny bugs for example, it doesn’t work well with .rmvb and .avi files, it just grab a screenshot with them.

  19. Tanmoy Chatterjee Says:

    Thanks for providing such a wonderful plugin. It works well with Yosemite.

  20. OS X Hidden Treasures: Quick Look - TidBITS Says:

    […] Quicklook Video: The Quicklook Video plug-in adds support for more video formats than Apple offers out of the box. […]