Bodyhammer86

Ok guys, here's the problem. I was playing some south park episodes that I downloaded off the internet last night and when I went to play one of them (which was an .avi file), windows media player played it as an audio file with a visualization rather than a video file. This has never happened up until last night, where the thing completely out of nowhere started doing this. I also downloaded the latest version and all of the video codecs for media player, and it still does this. Anyone got any ideas as to what the hell is causing this?

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Dilbert1234567

Did the file work ever, or did it stop working? if it stopped working, try removing the codec and then reinstalling it, if its never worked, you don’t have the right codec to play the media. Download a program called gspot, it analysis avi files and tells you what codec they are encoded with and what codec’s can play it.

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Bodyhammer86

Well, prior to last night, I had no problems playing .avi files and then suddenly last night after I was done watching an episode, I went to play another one and the damned thing played it as an audio file instead of a video file. But I'll give the gspot program a shot later on when I have more time. Thanks for the advice though.

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Dilbert1234567

.avi means nothing, its just a container (audio video interlace) inside it has an audio and a video, these are then encoded using different methods of encoding (divx, xvid, x264, mp3, ogg, etc) the files are probably encoded differently, you have the codec for the first files, just not this one.

here is a list of the different container formats:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...tainer_formats

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Moyaboy

Have you tried to download DivX and make sure the codecs for Divx is current?

Sometimes especially since you are downloading form the internet movie files, certain people might have a newer version than others for the coding of AVI files.....

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Silvy

Also, try playing the file that worked before. If it still works, you can assume that the file format is different. If it also stopped working, then your codec is at fault.

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Dilbert1234567

befor we asume its divx, lets use gspot to find out what the needed codec is.

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Moyaboy

I was basing that information on the AVI descriptor, are there other ways to encode AVI files that doesn't use the DivX software?

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Dilbert1234567

like I already said, AVI is just a container, it does not have anything to do with the inside parts, divx is widely used, and so is xvid, but there are many other different encoding schemes, hundreds, and it could be any one of them, that is why gspot was created to sort through the mess.

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Bodyhammer86

Alright guys, I downloaded the gspot program and analyzed the files, it said I needed the XVid and New DivX codecs, so I downloaded them and they work fine now. Thanks for the help guys!

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