I'm using the newest vlc on windows xp.

My problem is, I shot a couple of AVIs on a digital camcorder, and I transferred them to my computer. However, when I opened the AVI files with either vlc or windows media player, only the sound would stream, and not the video. media player said that codecs were missing, and it proceeded "to acquire codecs", and then it said "codecs acquired". However, there was still no video streaming.

I tried downloading an avi codec pack...didn't work. How many different avi codec packs are there, anywyas?

Also, I was previously able to play other AVI files without a hitch; for some reason, it was only the AVI files that I shot with my camcorder that doesn't work. Note this: I tried playing the camcorder videos on a friends computer, and it worked perfectly fine (he's even more computer illiterate than me, so I couldn't get any help from him).

I'm really confounded by this...some of my avi files work, and some don't? Even though by playing them on my friend's computer, I've confirmed that the file itself is not damaged?

Here is a sample video: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=AL0VV04F


Thanks in advance for any help.

AVI is just a container, it can contain many different types of video which require different codecs.
That's why some of your AVI's will play properly while others won't.

There isn't an AVI codec, just codecs for playing back the video formats that are contained within containers such as AVI.

From what I can tell the codec you need to play the video in the file that you uploaded is SEDG (Samsung MPEG-4 codec).
Supposedly this is the codec you need:

LINK

Do you have a Samsung Miniket digital camcorder?

As a bonus ffmpeg converts the video into other formats correctly (I used ffmpegX) without any additional codecs.

Thanks! The video plays perfectly fine in windows media player now.

It seems like some people are having problems opening videos encoded with SEDG in Windows Movie Maker. For some people it seems to work and others it doesn't, I can't test it myself as I don't have any computers with Windows with me at the moment.

The easiest solution would be to use another program to convert the files into a format that Windows Movie Maker definitely supports.

I used ffmpegX (OS X version) to convert the file successfully, so ffmpeg should work for you. ffmpeg may be a bit tricky to use though.

You could try VirtualDub though I haven't used it in a long time.

EDIT: Did you manage to get Windows Movie Maker to open the file correctly?

If you have any issues with Codecs in the future try out http://www.cccp-project.net
A very good codec pack.
Make sure you uninstall previous codec though.