How to Play AVI Files and Repair Corrupted Videos on Mac

Eleanor Reed

Jan 27, 2024 • Filed to: Photo/Video/Audio Solutions • Proven solutions

If you also wish to play AVI videos on your Mac, then you might encounter a similar issue as well. Although you can play AVI videos on Mac, sometimes users might encounter these issues due to some coding-decoding errors. The good news is that there are several techniques to bypass this problem and play AVI on Mac. In this post, I will teach you how to open AVI files on Mac without any issue.

Part 1: Can You Play AVI on Mac?

Before we learn how to watch AVI on Mac, it is important to discuss some important things. Ideally, you can play AVI files on Mac, but when it comes to QuickTime, there can be an issue.

What is an AVI format?

AVI stands for Audio Video Interleave and is a popular resource interchange file format that has been developed by Microsoft. The format was first introduced in 1992 and is still commonly used to contain video files.

QuickTime and AVI

Just like every other media format, AVI is also based on a codec system that is preloaded in Windows Media Player. Though, QuickTime, which is the default media player in Mac, does not have the codec for AVI included. That is why, when we try to load an AVI file on QuickTime, we get an error that the video format is not supported by it.

This only means that you can't load AVI on QuickTime. Although, you can still play AVI on Mac by using any other supported media player or by converting the file to a QuickTime supported format.

Part 2: How to Play AVI Files on Mac: 2 Smart Ways

As stated above, there are two major solutions to learn how to play AVI files on Mac. You can either use a compatible video player or convert AVI files to a QuickTime supported format.

Fix 1: Use an AVI Compatible Media Player on Mac

While QuickTime might not have the needed codec for AVI, there are plenty of other media players that can play AVI on Mac instead. Here are some of these popular AVI players that you can consider using:

• VLC Media Player
• Wondershare UniConverter
• Elmedia Universal Player
• MacGo Media Player
• DivX AVI Player
• 5K Media Player for Mac
• JustPlay Media Player
• Cisdem Mac Player

To learn how to open AVI files on Mac, you can take the assistance of VLC Media Player. It is one of the most popular and freely available video players that work on almost every platform. You can just go to its official website to first download it on your Mac. Afterward, you can launch VLC Media Player on Mac and drag-and-drop your AVI file. You can also go to its Menu > File > Open File to browse and load your AVI video on it.

Fix 2: Convert AVI to MOV and Play It on QuickTime

If you want to improve the compatibility of the AVI video, then you can consider converting it to MOV format. The MOV format is fully supported by QuickTime and other popular media players as well.

There are tons of online tools that you can use to convert AVI to MOV. Apart from that, you can also use a desktop application like Wondershare UniConverter to convert AVI to MOV or any other compatible format. You can follow these simple steps to learn how to view AVI files on Mac.

Step 1: Load the AVI file

Firstly, just launch Wondershare UniConverter and go to its Convert > Video Converter tab. From here, you can choose to add files from your Mac to the application. You can load multiple files if you wish to.

Step 2: Convert AVI to MOV

Once the AVI video is loaded on UniConverter, you can click on the "Output Format" feature from the bottom panel. Now, go to the supported "Video" formats and select MOV from here. Click on the "Create" button now and simply convert your AVI file to MOV, which you can easily play on QuickTime or any other media player.

Part 3: Playback Issues with AVI Videos and How to Fix Them

Now when you know how to play AVI on Mac, you can easily solve this issue. Though, sometimes while playing an AVI video, you might encounter unwanted playback errors. Here are some of these commonly encountered errors with their simple solutions.

Case 1: The Video has Missing Fragments

This is a minor issue in which some video or audio fragments go missing while loading the file. It can happen due to a corrupt file, which I will let you know how to fix in the coming section.

Another issue for this could be an incomplete download of the file. In this case, you can go to the online platform or any other source of the video and download it again to your Mac.

Case 2: Issues While Loading an AVI File on VLC

At times, we only encounter issues while loading an AVI file on the VLC Media player. To fix this and learn how to watch AVI on Mac via VLC, you can use its inbuilt video repair feature. Just launch VLC Media Player and go to its Tools > Preferences > Input/Codecs field.

Now, under the damaged or incomplete AVI files option, select the "Always Fix" feature and save your changes. Afterward, whenever an AVI file would be loaded on VLC, it will automatically try to repair it in the background.

Case 3: Repair corrupt AVI videos (or any other playback issue)

Lastly, chances are that the AVI video you are trying to play could be corrupt or damaged as well. To fix this or any other issue with your AVI file, you can take the assistance of Wondershare Repairit Video Repair. The application is extremely easy to use and runs on every major Windows/macOS version. By following a simple click-through process, you can fix any major or minor issue with your videos.

Some of the common errors that Wondershare Video Repair can fix are blurry images, corrupt sound, video lag, corrupt file, codec error, and so on. You can either try its standard fix or use its advanced repairing feature. While the Advanced Repair will take more time, its results would also be better. Apart from AVI, it can also fix MOV, MPEG, FLV, MKV, and several other video formats.

Step 1: Load the videos to repair

To start with, you can just launch Wondershare Video Repair on your system and load the corrupt videos here. You can click on the "Add" icon to browse them or just drag and drop your files here.

Step 2: Start the video repairing process

Once you have added the videos, you can see their details here. If you want, you can add more videos or delete any video from here as well. Now, just click on the "Repair" button to start the process.

Step 3: Preview and save your files

After waiting for a while, the application will display the results and would let you preview your data as well. You can now check the results of the repaired files and save them to a secure location.

Step 4: Perform an Advanced Repair (optional)

In case the standard scan is not able to repair your AVI videos, then you can click on the "Advanced Repair" option instead. For this, you need to first load a sample video that must be of the same format as the corrupt file and shot on the same device too.

Now, you can just wait for a while as the application would take some time to repair your videos. You can just preview the results of the video repair and save your file to a secure location of your choice.

Part 4: Other Important Things About AVI Files

By now you would be able to learn how to open AVI files on Mac easily and even fix corrupt AVI videos. Besides that, you can go through some additional details about AVI files to manage them easily.

Common AVI Usage

AVI is one of the most commonly used media (video/audio) file container that has been around since 1992. Since it is developed by Microsoft, you will find most of the Windows supported files in AVI formats as well. It uses the Xvid codec and DivX codec schemes that are available in Windows Media Player and numerous other media players.

By default, AVI follows a lossless compression technique that would retain the original quality of data. That's why in some systems these files are further compressed to optimize their storage. Therefore, if you want to store video files in high quality then AVI would be an ideal pick.

AVI and Other Formats

Every video format is based on a compression technique and certain coding-decoding schemes. While AVI is lossless, some other video formats can support lossy compression and have any other codec. Mostly, the AVI format is recommended due to the following reasons:

• It provides high-quality results with good fidelity.
• The format is fully supported by Windows and several other platforms.
• Most of the available media players are compatible with AVI
• It is not restricted to any hardware or software parameters
• The compression speed is pretty fast and the format is universally acceptable

Pro-Tip

While learning how to play AVI on Mac, just make sure that the media player you are using should support the AVI format. Try not to change the header, extension, or any other meta component of the file just to play it with QuickTime.

There you go! I'm sure that after reading this guide, you can easily solve issues like how to play AVI files on Mac. Apart from providing two simple solutions to play AVI on Mac, I have also included several techniques to fix issues related to AVI video playback. If you encounter any issue while playing an AVI file, then just use Wondershare Video Repair. A user-friendly application, it can fix all kinds of issues on your AVI files in a jiffy.