Some AVI's work....some don't. Can you splain why?

[ave8tr]

Hi helpers. I am not ripping, just downloading some avi's off Kazaa and learning how to encode to mpeg and then make a CD. Have had success due to the "How to Convert" section in this web site (thanks a million).

Here is the issue. When I download a 300+mb avi file and try to run it in Windows media player I usually get two errors. First is that the "media file is not supported" or I get a black screen, no sound, no nothing. Do the codecs work with WMP? I don't think they do as the only movie I have successfully turned into a CD is the one I could watch on the puter if I wanted to. Why do some avi's run on WMP and some others don't?

Sorry for being long winded, but I have run through 15 pages of posts and have not seen this topic, and I don't want to be a lamer by posting a dumb Q or giving a bad subject line.

Thanks.

[Tivo Homer]

Try loading the NIMO codec pack from http://www.btinternet.com/~nimosiro/ I loaded it using the "basic" options and since then have been able to view all of the AVIs I've downloaded.

If that doesn't work, there are a ton of other codecs you can download.
Try: http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/software2.htm
or
Try: http://www.fourcc.org/indexcod.htm

Good Luck.

Tivo Homer

[snowmoon]

For the techie answer.

.avi's are a wrapper around video and audio streams. To play those streams windows needs a "CODEC" that assists in the decoding back into a format that can viewed or played through the soundcard.

Currently their are 2 types of codecs. Old ones ( don't know the technical term for them. AVIFile compatible? ) and newer "direct show filters". This point is important.

WMP is a Direct show application and therefore it uses direct show filters. It even has a filter for playing the old codecs as well. So If your system has just a direct show filter for a type of video ( say WM8 ) you should be able to view it in WMP and convert it with TMPGenc & the direct show plugin ( included ), but it will not play in VirtualDub since Vdub only support the older style codecs.

So that's the $.02 tour.