please help! AVI won't play

[dahammer]

I recently downloaded the second half to an AVI movie file from a friend's ftp server. It's around 715 mb. Whenever I try to load the file using a player (Windows Media, WinDVD 4, Quicktime, etc.) It says:
"Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The file is either corrupt or the Player does not support the format you are trying to play."
Now I looked into it and found out about video codecs (I'm new to all of this). So, since the complete file name is:
"TLF-VIDEO-12.02.03.Warriors.of.the.Wind.1984.DVDRip.XViD.iNT-TLF-CD2" I downloaded a Xvid codec. That didn't work. I also tried to load the file using my mplayer32, but it wouldn't play it either. So I tried fixing the file. I downloaded several programs, and got one to actually perform the fix operation, which was "All Media Fixer". It "fixed" it for about 30 minutes and I still have the same problem when trying to play it.
There also some odd problems: The first half of the movie, which is a different file that I got from the same person, works fine. It's around the same size, and the full name is:
"TLF-VIDEO-12.02.03.Warriors.of.the.Wind.1984.DVDRip.XViD.iNT-TLF-CD1.avi" When I downloaded this from him, the only thing I did different was I downloaded it from him using Overnet, a Peer-to-Peer program, not his FTP server. This file works perfectly. The one I downloaded via his FTP server is the one I'm having problems with, yet he claims it works fine for him. One of my guesses is that it messed up somehow when downloading it, because The connection stopped several times, and I had to tell it to resume. But I don't know if that would do anything to the file or not, because I DID get the whole file. Or maybe there's something that the computer does to the file differently with different programs right after it's done downloading.
Another odd thing: when I checked the file with a certain program that reports bad frames in the movie, it came out reporting none. (I can't remember the name of it) And also, when I try and open it with other fixing programs, like VirtualDub, it says "cannot detect file type..."
So really I don't know what else to do. I have the first half of the movie, which runs perfectly, then there's this other half. I can't download it again because it took two days already to download it from him. Again, I'm new to all this, so any help from anyone would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much!

[shiny#3]

hello and welcome to the forum

first of all I´d like suggest that you use a decent player to play back your movies such are "BS Player", "MV2 player" ....
those can be found in the software section of this site
they are freeware.

then I would suggest that if you are asking questions about a movie you should provide very detailed information about the movie.
load your movie into Gspot or Virtual dub and post in here a screenshot of the information provided by these programs. the information that virtual dub provides
can be displayed in the file drop-down menu of virtual dub if you hit the option "video information"

question: do you have that divx pro codec 5.1.1 installed?
than simply hit Start-->programs-->divx--> divx codec-->
decoder configuration utility--> quality settings--->and mark the option "support generic mpeg4 .

start BS Player, and see if it works.
if it doesn't work you can still try to repair your movie
with "video fixer" or avifix.both are also available on the software section of the site.

good luck!

[dahammer]

Thanks for the reply,
Well I tried downloading the divx pro codec 5.1.1, and did what you suggested. I attempted to load it into the Divx player, but it says "Can't open file". I downloaded BSPlayer and the same thing happens. When I had previously tried loading the file into virtualdub AND Gspot, they simply won't recognize the file. For example, all of Gspot's fields say "n.a." and it says that it's not a valid AVI file.

Also, I tried Video Fixer, and in the log it says "not a valid AVI file...can not fix"

Im not sure what else to do. It all seems odd to me, seeing as how it works fine for my friend, whom I downloaded it from. I do have another question though: Does it make a difference on the quality of a file depending on the program through which it was downloaded? Thanks again for all of your help.

[shiny#3]

It seems to be that way as you have suggested yourself
...
if the moviefile is not workig by and with all the ways suggested,
it must have gone corrupt in a way that I can not
determine by now.....
so .... before you spend any more time on correcting
your movie file....try to determine whether you really did
download it correctly........
use the VLC player "Video lan client" to make sure
whether you can watch parts of it.


if not .... forget it and look for another reliable source

[setarip]

To dahammer

If he/she is TRULY a friend, simply ask him/her to burn a CD and mail it to you...

[dahammer]

Thanks for all of your help shiny #3. I suppose I'll have to give up on this one, and try another source, like you said. Thanks again.