Unable to convert quicktime files

I've been trying to convert a quicktime movie to an XviD avi, but its not working out very well.

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*** Try to upgrade /Users/(my username)/.mplayer/codecs.conf from etc/codecs.conf
*** If it still does not work, read DOCS/codecs.html!
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I get this at the end of a long line of text. It says it doesn't understand "Component Video" I tried using Quicktime Player to convert it to a raw quicktime movie, and I got a different error, but at the end it told me to check the codecs again. I don't even have a codecs.conf that I can find, so I'm not sure what to do about it. I've been having no luck getting anything to work. I saw something on the website about decoding with quicktime in the options tab, but I see nothing like that when I looked. I am using version 0.0.9. What am I doing wrong?

[major]

The Component video codec is not supported. Use another Quicktime codec like MJPEG or almost any other.