Gray frames in .avi; missing codec?

[nonGrata]

Hello everyone, hope you're all doing great.
My first time here, I'm a noob >_< and I hope someone will be able to help me.
So, I got a nice movie as an .avi file, tried playing it (using different players, but focusing on Windows Media Player v.9.0) and I can see some images but there are lots and lots of grey frames within its whole length. I used GSpot to try and identify the problem, it said the codec H264/x264 (ITU H.264) is not installed. So I found some codec pack - ffdshow, which was supposed to contain it and installed it. GSpot still says the codec is missing. The grey frames are still present.
I have no idea what to do at this point. I've been googling a lot but found no similar problems, maybe because I'm not a native english speaker and I couldn't be very exact
As I mentioned, I'm not good at all at these things. Could anyone please suggest a solution?
Thank you,
best wishes,
Claire.

[kschang]

You need to enable X264 decoding within the FFD control panel. It's not on by default. FFDShow keeps a lot of stuff off by default to prevent conflict with other codecs. It's both a blessing and a curse.

[redwudz]

Another option may be to try the latest version of VLC Media Player. I use it to play H264's from the net. It's a freeware program and can usually play just about any format available, using it's own codecs, so no codec installs needed.

It's well worth having on your system, even if it doesn't work with this particular codec.

And welcome to our forums.

[nonGrata]

Hello again! I've enabled the X264 decoding within the FFD, but that didn't help. Yet when using the VLC Media Player, everything was OK! I guess there might have been some other problems with my movie, but since it's now working just fine, I won't investigate any further.
Thank you, guys!
Best wishes,
Claire.