VLC Media Player - Can you play WMV on a Mac? VLC supports several video and audio file formats as well as Video CD, streaming Protocols and DVD-Video. With VLC you can stream a video over your Mac with internet connection and transcode multimedia files VLC is a well-known WMV player, it is compatible with Mac and Windows as well as Linux OS.
VLC 2.0 'Twoflower' is a major new version of our popular media player. With faster decoding on multi-core, GPU, and mobile hardware and the ability to open more formats, notably professional, HD and 10bits codecs, 2.0 is a major upgrade for VLC.

VLC media player VLC is a stand-alone media player like Quicktime and Windows Media Player. Many people prefer VLC because it is available for many different operating systems and is an open source software project supported by many dedicated programmers across the world. VLC 2.0 'Twoflower' is a major new version of our popular media player. With faster decoding on multi-core, GPU, and mobile hardware and the ability to open more formats, notably professional, HD and 10bits codecs, 2.0 is a major upgrade for VLC.

Nov 23, 2020 • Filed to: Photo/Video/Audio Solutions • Proven solutions

When it comes to video formats, there has been a lot of variety in the present time. Though, some video formats like AVI, FLV, or WMV are just more commonly used than others. If you have also got a video file of these formats, then chances are that you could be looking for ways to play WMV on Mac too. Besides that, users would also like to know how to open MKV files on Mac or Windows as well. In this guide, I'm going to let you know how to play video files of these popular formats on your Mac or Windows computer.

Part 1: How to Play MKV, WMV, AVI, and FLV Files on Mac

A lot of Mac users find it hard to open FLV, AVI, or WMV video files due to their limited compatibility with QuickTime player. To resolve this and play WMV on Mac, you can use a third-party media player or a video converter as well. Here's a stepwise solution to open AVI on Mac and other formats like FLV, MKV, and WMV.

Step 1: Get to know the video file format

Firstly, you need to check the format of the video file so that you can pick a suitable media player for it. To do this, just go to Finder and browse to the location where your video file is saved. Right-click to get its context menu and select the 'Get Info' option to know its file format.

Step 2: Select a suitable media player

After getting to know the type of the file format, you need to pick an ideal media player. For instance, you can play videos on Mac's QuickTime as well as a third-party tool like VLC Player or MKV Player. Some of the major formats supported by QuickTime Player are MOV, MP4, M4V, WAV, AIFF, and AAC.

As you can see, formats like FLV or WMV are not supported by it. Therefore, you can download VLC media player on Mac by visiting its official website. Once VLC is installed, you can move it to the Applications folder for easy access.

VLC Media Player is compatible with a wide range of video formats like FLV, AVI, MKV, MIDI, ASF, 3GP, and some WMV containers as well. Therefore, you can easily open the FLV file on VLC by launching it and visiting its File > Open File option to browse the video. You can also drag and drop your videos to the VLC player's interface as well.

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Step 3: Convert the Video (if needed)

Some video formats like WMV are not supported by Mac's native media players like QuickTime. In this case, you can first convert the video file to play WMV on Mac. To do this, you can take the assistance of Wondershare UniConverter that is a user-friendly solution to convert all kinds of videos.

Apart from that, you can also take the assistance of the VLC Media Player to do the same. Just launch VLC and go to its File > Convert/Save to convert an unsupported file to a compatible format.

Step 4: Change the default player

As you know, you might not be able to open an MKV file on QuickTime (or other formats like FLV/AVI). Therefore, you can consider changing the default player for the file instead of QuickTime to another player like VLC. For this, just select the video file, right-click, and go to the 'Get Info' option.

If your QuickTime fails to play a video, an error would occur - QuickTime Error 2048.

As the Info tab would be launched, go to the 'Open with' section and select VLC (or any other media player) from here.

If you want to make the other files of the same format to be opened with the selected application, then click on the 'Change All' option instead.

Simply confirm your choice by clicking on the 'Continue' button so that all the other files of the same format would now be opened on VLC (or any other media player) by default.

Part 2: How to Open MKV, WMV, AVI, and FLV Files on Windows

Now when you know how to open an AVI on Mac, let's learn how to open FLV files and other video formats on Windows as well. Although Windows Media Player supports most of these formats, you can also try a third-party media player to open them.

Step 1: Know the format of the video

Firstly, you need to know the format of the video file that you want to play. For this, just locate the file, and go to its properties. Under the 'Details' tab, you can just know the exact format of the file.

Step 2: Convert the video file (if needed)

Ideally, you would not face any issue to open FLV, MKV, WMV, or AVI files on Windows, but you can still convert your videos if needed. To do this, you can use a third-party tool like Wondershare UniConverter or VLC Media Player as well. Afterward, just launch VLC and go to its Menu > Media > Convert/Save to convert the video to a compatible format.

How can you Convert MOV, WEBM, MKV, GIF, 3GP, FLV, or AVI to MP4?

Step 3: Select a media player to open videos

The good thing is that the Windows Media Player supports most of the common formats like AVI, WMV, AIF, WMD, and other containers. Though, if you want to open MKV or FLV file, then you can consider VLC Media Player instead.

Simply go to the official website of the VLC Media Player to install it on your system and launch it. To open FLV/MKV files, just drag-and-drop your files or go to VLC's Menu > Media > Open File to launch a browser window to load your files.

Step 4: Change the default player for videos

A lot of Windows users change the default media player to VLC instead of Windows Media Player as it has better compatibility and you can use it to directly open FLV files. You can do it by visiting Windows Settings > Default Apps > Video Player.

Tap on the section to play movies and TV to get a list of the installed media players on your system. From here, just select the VLC Media Player so that the FLV, AVI, WMV, or MKV files would be directly opened on VLC Player.

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Part 3: How to Play Corrupted Video Files on Windows and Mac

By now, you would be able to know how to play WMV or AVI on Mac. Though, a lot of times, users find it hard to open MKV, FLV, or any other file on their system. Even if the video player is compatible with the file, you might encounter playback errors or loading issues. This would indicate that the video you are planning to load might be damaged or corrupted.

Possible Reasons for Videos not Playing

The video could be damaged or corrupted
It can have a missing or damaged header
Any other meta component of the file could be damaged
The video-audio components might not be synced properly
There can be missing or dropped frames in the file
The location where the video is stored could be corrupted as well.
The video can have pixelated frames, jittery pictures, blank screens, or any other issue.

The Best Option to Fix Corrupted Videos

If you are not able to open an MKV file on your system or videos of any other format, then chances are that the video could be corrupted. In this case, you can use a reliable repairing tool like Wondershare Video Repair to fix your files by following a simple click-through process. The application supports all sorts of video file formats and can fix the above-listed video errors pretty easily.

Using Wondershare

Vlc Media Player For Mac Wmv