Flip4Mac from

Telestream Telestream, Inc. is an American privately held computer software company. History The company, founded in 1998, is headquartered in Nevada City, California with personnel in France, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Canada and the UK. Telestream pro ...

, Inc. was a digital media software for the

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

operating system. It was known for being the only

QuickTime QuickTime is an extensible multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. Created in 1991, the latest Mac version, QuickTime X, is a ...

component for macOS to support

Windows Media Video Windows Media Video (WMV) is a series of video codecs and their corresponding video coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows Media framework. WMV consists of three distinct codecs: The original video compression technology ...

, and was distributed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

as a substitute after they discontinued their media player for Macintosh computers.

Features

Telestream previously offered a free standalone player also known as Flip Player while charging for their Pro and Studio features until the release of v3.3 on May 1, 2014, when they began charging for Flip4Mac PlayerWhy is Telestream charging for Flip4Mac Player?
– Telestream (plug-in and standalone player combined). There are four versions of Flip4Mac Player: * Flip4Mac Player ($9.99) Play Windows Media files (.wma and .wmv) directly in QuickTime applications and view Windows Media content on the Internet using a web browser * Flip4Mac Player Pro ($29) Adds the ability to import WMV and WMA files for editing and conversion to QuickTime formats or iOS devices * Flip4Mac Studio ($49) Includes all the features of Player Pro, and adds the ability to create standard definition (up to 768 x 576) WMV files using preset templates and custom encoding profiles * Flip4Mac Studio Pro HD ($179) Includes all the features of Studio, and adds two-pass HD (up to 1920 x 1080), VBR encoding and pro audio features

Technical specifications

Below is the following technical specifications for Flip4Mac Player: Codec support :NOTE: Exporting WMV9 Advanced and WMA Professional and Lossless is supported only by Flip4Mac Studio Pro HD Network stream protocols Frame sizes available for export

System requirements

In order to run Flip4Mac, you need to meet the following specifications: *

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...

-based Mac *

Mac OS X Snow Leopard Mac OS X Snow Leopard (version 10.6) is the seventh major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Snow Leopard was publicly unveiled on June 8, 2009 at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conferen ...

or later :NOTE: Please note if running on Snow Leopard, you need to update to 10.6.8 via Apple Software Update.

Windows Media Components for QuickTime

Windows Media Components for QuickTime allow free transparent playback of the most common

and

Windows Media Audio Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a series of audio codecs and their corresponding audio coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs. The ...

formats on

inside

applications and

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

s. On January 12, 2006,

discontinued the Macintosh version of

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP) is the first media player and media library application that was developed by Microsoft for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as ...

and began distributing Flip4Mac Player for free until May 1, 2014, when Telestream began charging for Flip4Mac Player. Microsoft's website refers the product as ''Windows Media Components for QuickTime'' while Telestream just refers to ''Flip4Mac''.

Windows Media

Advanced Stream Redirector

Advanced Stream Redirector (ASX) file format is a type of

Extensible Markup Language Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both Human-readable med ...

(XML) metafile designed to store a playlist of Windows Media files for a multimedia presentation. Flip4Mac currently supports the following

MIME Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) is an Internet standard that extends the format of email messages to support text in character sets other than ASCII, as well as attachments of audio, video, images, and application programs. Messa ...

types: :

Advanced Systems Format

Advanced Systems Format (ASF) is Microsoft's proprietary digital audio/ digital video

container format A container format (informally, sometimes called a wrapper) or metafile is a file format that allows multiple data streams to be embedded into a single file, usually along with metadata for identifying and further detailing those streams. Not ...

, especially meant for streaming media.

Windows Media Audio

Windows Media Audio (WMA) is an

audio data compression In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compression ...

technology developed by Microsoft. The name can be used to refer to its

audio file format An audio file format is a file format for storing digital audio data on a computer system. The bit layout of the audio data (excluding metadata) is called the audio coding format and can be uncompressed, or compressed to reduce the file size, o ...

or its

audio codec An audio codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream (a codec) that encodes or decodes audio. In software, an audio codec is a computer program implementing an algorithm that compresses and decompres ...

Windows Media Digital Rights Management

Flip4Mac is unable to play content that has been protected using

digital rights management Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM) such as access control technologies can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted work ...

Windows Media Video

Windows Media Video (WMV) is a

video data compression In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compression ...

technology developed by Microsoft.

Version history

* Flip4Mac 2.1 was released in July 2006 with support for Intel-based Macs. * Flip4Mac 3.0 was released in September 2012 with support for

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit CPUs and ALUs are those that are based on processor registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. A comp ...

improvements as well as

Gatekeeper A gatekeeper is a person who controls access to something, for example via a city gate or bouncer, or more abstractly, controls who is granted access to a category or status. Gatekeepers assess who is "in or out", in the classic words of manage ...

. It also includes Flip Player, a new multi-format video player with the ability to play the most common Windows Media formats. * Flip4Mac 3.1 was released in February 2013 with support for the third generation MacBook Pros, MacBooks (relaunched version of the original MacBook line), and

iMac iMac is a family of all-in-one Mac desktop computers designed and built by Apple Inc. It has been the primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since its debut in August 1998, and has evolved through seven distinct forms. In i ...

s with Retina display. It also includes the ability to export videos to iTunes from Flip Player. * Flip4Mac 3.2 was released in May 2013 with support for dramatically improved load time for ASF (.wmv, .wma, .wm, .wmp, .asf, etc.) file formats. * Flip4Mac 3.3 was released in May 2014 with several minor 3.3.X updates with 3.3.7 being the latest update. Several updates include re-supporting Mac OS X Snow Leopard (after the support being removed in 3.0), and natively supporting

OS X Yosemite OS X Yosemite ( ; version 10.10) is the eleventh major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. OS X Yosemite was announced and released to developers on June 2, 2014, at WWDC 2014 and rel ...

(10.10) and

OS X El Capitan OS X El Capitan ( ) () is the twelfth major release of macOS (named OS X at the time of El Capitan's release), Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh. It focuses mainly on performance, stability, and security. Followi ...

(10.11). * The software is no longer supported higher than OS X El Capitan (10.11).Is Flip4Mac supported on OS X El Capitan?
– Telestream As a replacement Telestream advises users to try their Switch4Player software.

References

External links

* {{official website, https://www.telestream.net/flip4mac/overview.htm, Flip4Mac – official site MacOS multimedia software MacOS media players