Problem With AVI Files? Some play - some don't ???

What about VLC Player?

Some of those .avi files might need a codec, that isn't offered by Perian

MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, DivX, 3ivx, H.264, Sorenson H.263, FLV/Sorenson Spark, FSV1, VP6, H263i, VP3, HuffYUV, FFVHuff, MPEG1 & MPEG2 Video, Fraps, Snow, NuppelVideo, Techsmith Screen Capture, DosBox Capture

Maybe the videos are encoded with Xvid or some obscure other codec.
VLC should help out there.

 

The thing to remember is that AVI is just a wrapper -- it says almost nothing about what codecs are used for the media inside. Like, you know, if you learn to read English, you can read books in English. But if you see another hardcover book on the shelf, and you open it, and it's in Persian, doesn't mean you can read it just cuz you know how to read English books, right?

Between Perian and the Windows Media components (what used to be called flip4mac), you can play most things in QT. MPlayer and VLC have their own codec set, essentially, and they play almost everything (at least almost everything that has no DRM)... they're designed for that very purpose, whereas QT is not.

OTOH if you identify the codec and find a plugin for QT, over time, it becomes less and less likely that new media you run into doesn't fall into one of the codecs you already installed. Just have to figure out if that process is worth the effort.

 

Whenever I get an AVI I convert it to MP4, then trash the AVI

 

Do you have Flip4Mac installed?

 

VLC can also convert any file it can play....

 

With OS X I use HandBrake or VLC & on Linux I use ffmpeg, which should also work with OS X.

 

ffmpeg has an OS X front end called ffmpegx, but I honestly like it least of those three options in terms of user interface, and speed is close to a wash, especially since Handbrake (this confuses my about the preceding reply) uses VLC for transcoding anyways.

 

I also prefer HB or VLC for user-friendliness on OS X. I did not know HB needed VLC until a few days ago when my 64bit version on SL complained that VLC was 32-bit. I was sure I installed VLC 64-bit. It turns out the lastest upgrade release was missing 64-bit for SL. I then grabbed the latest 64-bit VLC nightly (in RC a few days ago) & have had no problems with it.