MKV format, MKV player on Mac

MKV format, How to play MKV video files on Mac?

This tutorial includes 5 parts, this is part 1 & part 2:

What are MKV files?

.MKV is a container format developed by Matroska. It is intended to serve as a universal format for storing common multimedia content, like movies or TV shows. It can hold different types of video and audio. For example, there might be an .AVI file contained within the .MKV file. Matroska is similar in conception to other containers like AVI, MP4 or ASF, but is entirely open in specification, with implementations consisting mostly of open source software.

Matroska file types:

MKV : Generally video files, as well those containing audio ( movies ) or video only.
MKA : audio only files, can contain any supported audio compression format, such as MP2, MP3, Vorbis, AAC, AC3, DTS, PCM and soon MPC ( musepack )
MKS : a so called ‘elementary' matroska stream containing any subtitles stream

Learn More: "MKV" at Wikipedia

How to play MKV files on Mac (Snow Leopard included)?

1. QuickTime+ Perian

Perian is a free QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats. It works perfectly even "like a charm" for most of the MKV files on Mac.
Note: Perian 1.1.4 is compatible with Snow Leopard, but some Mac users open MKV files in QuickTime X. To fix this problem, you can install this application will fix it. It's not necessary to open files with them; just having a copy on the disk is enough, but it may be necessary to start the application once to register it. This will be done automatically in the next Perian update.

2. Switch to other player

Using VideoLAN VLC media player
VLC player supports all the video and audio streams you will find in an MKV file. You need not to install any codecs or filters to play .MKV files.
Plex and VLC player are two highly recommended powerful players and in most cases they work like a charm under Mac. If you are using Snow Leopard, VLC player would be a better choice considering some Snow Leopard users reported that they ran into some problems with Plex on Snow Leopard. Plus Plex sometimes just won't play HD MKV movies.

3. Convert the MKV file to QuickTime MOV

This is not the best solution but if you want to play your MKV (or HD MKV) videos and the above two solution just not work for you and you've no better choice. MKV Video Converter for Mac (Click here if you are using PowerPC-based Mac) can help you convert your MKV file to QuickTime format or any other popular file formats like MP4, WMV, MOV, FLV etc. You can also upload the converted files to your iPod, iPhone, PSP, Zune, and many other popular digital players for playback on the go.
Note: iSkysoft MKV Video Converter for Mac is perfectly compatible with Snow Leopard.