can’t preview movies in Finder?
One of the features I really love in OS X is the ability to preview anything by selecting the file in finder and pressing the spacebar – formally called ‘Quick Look’ – without actually having to open the full app. This is great for both music and movies.
However, if you uninstalled Perian or Flip4Mac or haven’t updated them recently, you will find that a lot of movie files – like .avi, for example – which are not fully supported in QuickTime won’t preview. The answer is to get the latest versions of these two plug-ins:
Perian 1.2.3
http://perian.org
Flip4Mac
http://flip4mac.en.softonic.com/mac
(hit the green download button (free), ignore the one trying to sell you a paid version).
You should then be able to see any movie using Quick Look.
🙂
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QuickTime won’t play my video
Posted on August 5, 2012, in Finder, Mountain Lion and tagged .avi, doesn't, files, flash, look, movie, movies, mpeg4, no show, play, Preview, quick, Quick Time, quicklook, Quicktime, quickview, see, show, swv, video, videos, view, work. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
applehelpwriter.wordpress.com 
thanks for this, just what i was looking for 😉
FYI restoring in Mountain Lion from a time machine backup can create another problem that keeps AVI video files from properly playing in quick look.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/19588830#19588830
The time machine restore does not restore a cache file that appear to be essential for quic look to play AVI files. No amount of twiddling with quicktime 7 or perian made any difference.