playing AVI files

Ok, so i downloaded some TV shows and tried to play them, but all I get are the multicoloured bars of a test pattern, and it says the file is 1:49 long when really it was only a 50 minute show. I post here because I think these may be corrupted files or something and have wasted far too much time trying to get them to play. But it seems odd that they are all corrupted when I have downloaded the same show 5 times with different titles and forms of the title.

I have:

--Downloaded a mass of Codecs, everything I could find for AVI and a bunch of other stuff. One was a mega-codec that was like 50 megs long, others were much shorter, but I did tons and tons.

--Checked to see if my other, older files still play (they do).

--Downloaded and tried to play them on: VLC media player, DiVX media player, media player classic, quicktime, as well as windows media player.

--The only faint glimmer of hope was DivX. It said that I probably needed to have the codec, saying something about FOURcc code MJPG. But I have downloaded tons of jpeg codecs, and nothing works.

Ok, have to get back to work, but if anyone can help I would greatly appreciate it.

it's probably a corrputed file of some sort, because AVI files - at least the AVI files I have - always work with DivX.

But it is strange though , that all of the AVI files seem corrupted, I have no idea what that means

:balloon2:

Maybe they were uploaded corrupted and noone noticed yet. You may want to ask the webmaster, sounds strange though.

hmm, if you try VirtualDub, it may also tell you more about what codec you need.
I use the matroska package, even though it has multiple codecs, it's more user-friendly than other codec packages, it actually uninstalls successfully without screwing up your other installed codecs, etc. I haven't got anything that I had problems with since I've started using this.

VirtualDub seriously ROCKS for a freebie.

Here's a link:

http://www.virtualdub.org/

As players.Have you tried BS-Player and PowerDVD.For a Codec pack i recommend Tsunami filter pack. :bow:

Yeah, Virtualdub is much much more than just a player, and perhaps a bit over-the-top for just viewing movies. I've made some pretty cool stuff with it--from splicing and dicing my own movies together, to snipping stuff from movies to output to animated .gifs. Considering it's free, now that I've learned how to use it (it's loaded with features so it took a while to wrap my brain around them all), I use it as my main viewer as well as editor, etc. I downloaded and installed the Codec recommended on the site and everything has worked great since.