What codec for an unknown avi?

Entree
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Joined: 12 Dec 2004
Posts: 1
OFFLINE

I have downloaded several (12) avi files that will not play on my PC - “unable to play back file. File type not supported”. Other avi files work just fine. Same situation on two machines. Attempts to determine codec with GSpot and AVICodec result in similar messages (i.e. not supported). How do I find out what codec these files use and then find the codec?

Thanks in advance.

cwoliver

Regular
Rep: 6

Joined: 20 Nov 2004
Posts: 1,286

Normally gspot should be pretty good at handling whatever you throw at it so long as it’s an avi. The file could be so corrupted as to be unreadable. The other possibility is it’s not an avi, but a renamed file. At that point it’s anyone’s guess what its contents are (video, image, data, text, other?). I’d just feed the file into as many applications as I can to see if any can read it (winzip, winrar, isobuster, media player classic, virtualdub, wordpad, etc)