Help my Mac won't open .avi files!!!

[WhiteShadow]

I have tried opening several .avi files with quicktime, vlc, mplayer, and divx player but none of there programs open the files.

I know well maybe those files just don't work, but they do work several months ago they worked fine on the same computer.

please any suggestions will be appreciated.

Okay so I have done some more looking around and have discovered that the external harddrive I keep my video media does not look how it should. Several folders have turned into "Unix Executable Files" and several folders images have disappeared only displaying strange characters.

Some of the .avi files on the drive still function perfectly others freeze and crash the program they are running in (and I have tried all the programs I have).

Here is a screen shot of some of the interesting occurrences.

 

[quigleybc]

this happened to me too.

I think it's after installing iLife 08

but, my AVi's do open....eventually.

Just now they take like two minutes or more to open depending how big they are.

I know avi is just a container, but it's specifically Avi's that are slow to open. .mov and .Mpeg is fine.

not sure what happened.

 

[sulhaq]

Exact same thing happened to me after updating to Quicktime 7.2 pro. Files either didn't open or took 5-10 minutes to open (depending on size)

What I did was uninstall any and all Quicktime codecs installed and then only installed the "Perian" codec. My quicktime works fine now. Try it hope it fixes your problems too. Just uninstall all codecs and then only install Perian. Did the trick for me.