Downloading movies from the web is very often a hit or miss proposition. Whereas nearly every movie ever made is out there somewhere, the questions of quality and encoding always come up. That said, because the MKV or “Matroska” format delivers high definition video with a relatively small file size, it’s increasingly popular with the kiddies on the interwebs today.

The Matroska Multimedia Container [Wikipedia] is an open standard free container format … that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture or subtitle tracks inside a single file. It is intended to serve as a universal format for storing common multimedia content, like … like AVI, MP4 or ASF. Matroska file types are .MKV for video (with subtitles and audio), .MKA for audio-only files and .MKS for subtitles only

Here are five ways to play mkv files on your Mac:

VLC Player — This is the gold standard for funky video file playback on the Mac and it has yet to fail me in the years I’ve been using the truly excellent piece of open source software (download).

Perian — A free, open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats. This is a deceptively powerful tool because once it’s installed you just forget it’s there (Download).

Mplayer — Multithreaded and written in 64-bit, this player is one of the fastest on OSX for H264 video, as well as instant MKV playback and advanced styled subtitles in the ASS format. Uses ffmpeg to decode. If VLC or Perian ever let me down, this will be the first app I download (download).

mBrowserX — Another ffmpeg-based playback solution, the new kid on the block from Japanese developer MacHouse (download).

DivX Player — Plays files with mkv and divx encoding. There’s a free version, though the company can be none too shy about asking for your money (download).

Alternately, if you need to convert mkv encoded files to formats playable on an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, VLC’s kissing cousin Handbrake can get you there. Toast can also perform conversion, but is generally slower and more likely bog down your Mac.

Know of a super slick mkv playback or conversion app? Share a link in the comments below…

via Mac Tricks & Tips