Therefore, if you don't have the same codec that was used to make the AVI video, you won't be able to play it. Basically, the data was compressed a certain way, and your computer needs to unpack it in the exact same way for it to be usable. This means that it will be compressed using a certain algorithm to reduce it to a manageable size. Apart from MKV, it can also play various other regular video/audio formats, including AVI, WMV, MP4, MOV, FLV, MPEG, etc. VLC Media Player is one of the best free MKV player for Mac. When raw video data is saved into a computer file, it needs to be encoded. Play MKV on Mac by converting MKV to Mac acceptable format. It simply 'contains' the data in a shell that will be familiar to the user and to your software.
AVI is what's called a 'container format,' which means it doesn't specify how the video and audio contained within it was encoded. Familiarize yourself with how the AVI file format works.
