Yes Perian is very good, I also recommend it. It's always wise to have back up video players on the mac. Another player you can get is MPlayer which has similar abilities to VLC with some slight differences. MPlayer - The Movie Player. I actually use a custom build MPlayer version. I cannot recall where I got it, I browsed those pages a long time to find it but was a more recent version. OH ... I found it: MPlayer - The Movie Player - Unofficial Packages. MPlayer can play specific DVD VOB files for example, & also better at playing .MOV files than VLC. MPlayer also has support for RealMedia & ASF files.

If VLC cannot play the file however, I wouldn't hold high hopes for it. Be nice to know what size that video file is.

When choosing to download a video file, it's wise to first do a Bitzi look up to see if the file is listed & reports about it; How to use Bitzi Web Lookup (click on blue link). __ Also, Movie download issues (click on blue link)