Computer problems

[Dr. Phil]

Hey peoples, I am having trouble playing some old AVI video files on my computer, they are all currently coming up as a black screen and sound only. I use ATI multimedia center and it is updated to the fullest (to my knowlege). Does anyone have any ideas regarding the issue? Thank

-DP

[tmusquiez]

Not too sure, but you can try MediaCoder to convert movies. It's free, and a powerful tool at that.

[weasel]

Most likely a codec problem. The audio is probably encoded in a standard format but the video is encoded with something wacky.

The thing about .AVIs is that it is just a shell; inside an AVI file you can have any number of codecs. Your video can even change codecs a few times per second to best adapt to whatever happens to be showing on the screen. This makes AVIs the most versatile and the best, technically speaking, video codec -- however, it is the hardest to use as you can't just download an "AVI Codec" since that is essentially "every codec on the planet."

So. You will have to find a codec analyzing tool to find out what codec your video is in, then download that codec.

If it was a video download from the web, it's likely DivX. Go to DivX.com and download their crap.

If it's from a camcorder you might have to pop in the camcorder CD and use the proprietary codec from there.

[Dr. Phil]

Thanks for the tips, Sk8 helped me figure it out and I can now watch season 2 of the office. Hooray!