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In OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, I could view thumbnails/previews of .wmv and .avi files in Finder through the software Flip4Mac. However in Mavericks, I cannot see previews although I've installed the newest Flip4Mac (3.2.0.16) software. Did something in OS X 10.9 Mavericks change for previewing in finder? Is it possible to get a preview of .avi and .wmv files?

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    Could you edit your question with the actual Flip4Mac software version? Just to make sure you have the correct one.
    – Saaru Lindestøkke
    Feb 23, 2014 at 1:34
  • Did you also download the new player (v3.2.1)? (see for more info the F4M support page)
    – Saaru Lindestøkke
    Feb 23, 2014 at 1:41
  • I hate it when a software needs to be updated after installing the most recent version from the website. Nevertheless 3.2.1 has the same result. The problem is really only with previews and thumbnails and I'm guessing something changed so that plug-ins for displaying other content is not allowed in mavericks?! :(
    – therealmarv
    Feb 23, 2014 at 1:53
  • Accept the answer given or post a comment with what happened. This lets other users know what worked for you.
    – ReinstateMonica3167040
    Aug 17, 2017 at 14:54

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Apparently I was a bit trigger-happy with the bounty, because after a bit more Googling, I stumbled upon QLVideo, which:

"-- allows macOS Finder to display thumbnails, static QuickLook previews, cover art and metadata for most types of video files."

The Github page has an installer (.pkg) under the releases page, but if you have Homebrew installed, you can also use brew install --cask qlvideo on command line (that's what I used — and thumbnails started generating immediately).

It even has couple of settings available:

  • defaults write uk.org.marginal.qlvideo SnapshotAlways -bool XX
    • Controls whether QuickLook "Preview" shows static snapshot(s) even if a playable preview is available. Default is NO.
  • defaults write uk.org.marginal.qlvideo SnapshotCount -int XX
    • Maximum number of snapshots to show in a QuickLook "Preview". Default is 10.
  • defaults write uk.org.marginal.qlvideo SnapshotTime -int XX
    • Time offset in seconds for thumbnails and for single snapshots. Unless the video clip is shorter than twice this value, in which case the snapshot is taken at the mid-point. Default is 60.
    • This setting doesn't affect thumbnails that have already been generated - use qlmanage -r cache and re-start Finder to force regeneration of existing thumbnails.
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