I can't play a big avi file

[Xp4nd3r]

Hi everybody,

Me and a friend recorded a short movie and I want to play it with the newest VLC player or just Windows Media Player (11). This is what happens when I open it with VLC: I see the movie for just a second, then it freezes that frame and while the time indicator is going forward (meaning it should keep playing). The sound is also frozen, you can't hear anything.
When I try to open it with Windows Media Player, it does play it without freezing, but the video is slower than the audio, meaning that after five seconds there's a big difference between the audio and video: the video is played far later than the audio, which is a major annoyance of course.

I want to edit this video but I can't even play it normally! My specs: AMD 3800+ single core, nVidia 8800GTS and plenty of harddisk space. o give you an example of how big the file actually is: we recorded for 80 seconds and the size is 2.1 GB, so it's huge.

How can I fix this so I can watch it without problems? Or do I need to buy a new CPU? All help is very much appreciated! Thanks in advance.

[filmboss80]

Tell us about the video file. I suspect it is an uncompressed avi file, but it is hard to tell until you've analyzed it. Download GSpot (free, in the Tools section of this site) and open your video file in it. GSpot will provide the info about your video file type and whatever codecs are needed to play the video and audio streams.

[Xp4nd3r]

Screenshotted. This file is from Fraps as you can see, fullsize recording of FEAR 2. This has the same symptoms, I don't know how I can just watch it. Any help? Thanks!

[minidv2dvd]

looks like there is too much data in the video for your system to keep up with. it's 21,346 kbps. try re-encoding to a compressed avi. maybe avidemux - try mp4 xvid or avc compression and leave the audio alone.

[Xp4nd3r]

If I buy a faster (dual core) CPU, will that help?

[johns0]

Yes.

[jagabo]

I want to edit this video but I can't even play it normally!

You don't need to be able to play it normally to edit it.