For Mac users who wish to play Windows Media Video or WMV, a video format developed by Microsoft on Mac with QuickTime Player, Flip4Mac is absolutely your best choice. This digital media software is particularly known for being the only QuickTime component for macOS that supports Windows Media Video.
What you can do with Flip4Mac?
Flip4Mac can be can be used to watch WMV files. Besides incorporating itself into QuickTime you can watch standalone WMV files, as well as WMV streaming videos within Safari or any other browser you might be using. There are no complicated settings, since everything is automated, so you won’t even feel a difference. Interface is identical to QuickTime player, but it can be changed. Flip4Mac basically makes a WMV file behave like a Mac-native format. This means that you’ll be able to preview a file within an icon in Finder, without opening it. This also works for Quick Look and Cover Flow features.
Why need to find a Flip4Mac alternative?
– Not work on macOS Sierra and High Sierra
Flip4Mac currently supports Mac OS X 10.6.8 thru 10.11.6. If you are running macOS Sierra 10.12 or macOS High Sierra 10.13, you will need to use Switch to play back and convert Windows Media into a format that will be compatible with your computer.
– Very limited file playback support
For people who wish to enjoy more media files on Mac with QuickTime player, Flip4Mac may disappointed you since it only allows you to play very limited video and audio codec. For those people who wish to get other uncommon video codec such as H.265, Prores, XAVC/XAVC S, etc or audio codec like AC3, DTS, DTS-HD, Dolby True-HD, etc, Flip4Mac may be not a good choice
– Easy to crash when you enjoying a video
This application is not very stable during the video playback process
Best free alternatives to Flip4Mac
VLC Player
As a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player that plays most multimedia files, the VLC Player is the first choice for playing Windows Media Video, or WMV, files for many Mac users.
Related article: Play Blu-ray on VLC | Play ISO with VLC | Play 3D Movies with VLC
MPlayerX
This is one of the most popular and top ranked Mac video player which is simple, free and capable of playing almost all popular formats including WMV. With its smooth playback, good online support as well as best codecs, this player is outstanding. However, it is suitable for advanced users.
KMPlayer
The KMPlayer is a versatile media player which can cover various types of container formats such as VCD, DVD, AVI, MKV, Ogg Theora, OGM, 3GP, MPEG-1/2/4, WMV, RealMedia and QuickTime.
Related article: Play Blu-ray with KMPlayer
Elmedia Player
Elmedia is a powerful multifunctional Mac media player which supports a wide range of formats including WMV, FLV, MOV, MP4, and AVI only to mention but a few. With this player you can play WMV files directly without the need for conversion, download both movies and videos, and easy creation and management of playlists.
Movist
Movist is one of the best free media players capable of playing WMV on several platforms and devices including Mac operating system. This ease of use platform has a great support for codecs and downloads. Its control panel makes it easy to do tweaking on video saturation, play speed, contrast, and subtitles among others.
Best powerful alternative to Flip4Mac
Sometimes, you may still fail to play certain WMV files with above listed Flip4Mac free alternative players. Or you may come the need to convert WMV files or other format files to QuickTime readable file formats. When in that condition, you can download the most powerful Flip4Mac alternative – Pavtube iMedia Converter for Mac. This application can work as a simple video player with its built-in video player window, in addition, it also helps to transcode any common digital file formats such as AVI, WMV, MP4, MOV, MKV, FLV, H.264, etc and also some new and uncommon digital file formats such as H.265/HEVC, MXF, XAVC/XAVC S, Prores, DNxHD to any of your digital file formats or devices preset profile formats for viewing not only on Mac but also on iPhone, iPad, PS4, Xbox One,etc.
The program also features some beneficial editing functions to assist you to trim or cut video to remove unwanted parts, merge separate video into one file, crop video to get off the black edges and size area, split large video into small by file size, count or length, add image/video/transparent text watermark to video, apply special rendering effect, insert external srt/ass/ssa subtitle, etc.
What’s more important is that Pavtube iMedia Converter for Mac has perfect compatibility with the new macOS High Sierra, macOS Sierra.