However, Apple dropped the support for QuickTime 7 since macOS Catalina, which might cause incompatible issues when playing or editing AV1/VP9, H.261, Cinepak, DivX, CineForm, and many formats on Mac. Programs like Final Cut Pro and Motion rely on QuickTime 7 framework to decompress many formats that they are not compatible with natively. In addition, Apple doesn't pull up a list to tell its users what video formats are accepted and what are not. For example, QuickTime Player is compatible with HEVC files, but it won't play an AVI HEVC file that doesn't come with the hvc1 tag. Besides, Mac is particular about the encoding specifications. Though Mac can recognize the AVI, it won't play the AVI correctly if it's incompatible with the codecs used for compressing the video and audio streams wrapped by the AVI file. Why Won't AVI Play on MacĪVI is just a wrapper format that stores the video and audio streams compressed by lossy codecs like MPEG-H HEVC, MPEG-4, VP9, VP8, MPEG-1 Video, MPEG-2 Video, MPEG-4 Visual, Opus, MP2, MP1, FLAC, ALAC, and WMA Lossless. However, playing an AVI file on Mac is often a challenge, especially when we're using the built-in media player - QuickTime Player. AVI (Audio Video Interlace) is a multiple media format created by Microsoft in 1992 as part of the Video for Windows which can be played on ancient and recent Windows computers.

If you're on the hunt for how to play AVI on Mac, then you've come to the right place.