AfterDawn: News

New guide: How to play AVI?

It took about seven years for us to realize that not all people are particularly interested in DVD ripping, backing up movies, editing video files, converting videos to other formats, etc. Apparently, some people just prefer to watch the videos. Weird..

Anyway, as we try to be the one-stop shop for all people who are interested in digital video (and digital multimedia in general), we added a new guide to our site, helping out the people who really couldn't care less whether HC is a better MPEG-2 encoder than CCE or vice versa. Actually, the guide tries to make it easy reading for users who don't even quite grasp the concept of different video encoding methods.



So, here's the very basic guide for people who just want to watch their videos:

How to play AVI?

As we tried to keep the guide as simple as possible, it doesn't go into details, but instead provides a set of links for "further reading" in case the guide sparks the need to know the digital video world slightly better. In order to assist with this task, the guide is accompanied by two "helper guides":

Find what video and audio codecs you need by using GSpot
What codecs to use? The AVIcodec guide

So, next time your neighbour or friend asks you how they could open the .avi they downloaded, maybe this guide will allow you to simply give them an URL and to tell them to learn it by themselves :-)

Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 10 May 2006 11:11

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• 11 comments

• mkaseatgb

  Good, its nice to see some guides for the people that are brand new to the site. Although I think a lot of people have a basic understanding of video codecs, this guide should help out a lot of new-comers. Keep up the good work!

  10.5.2006 12:24 #1

• borhan9

  I agree. For the newbies we may need to make guides that cover the basics of basics and im not talkin bout newbies as in newbies that do work in the field, but the other type.
  
  One thing i have noticed is that some people need guides that are in simpler terms easy language.
  
  or increase our glossary, could be another idea.

  10.5.2006 12:51 #2

• flyingv

  Thank-you for this useful info and links to these programs! There were several points in here which helped me out alot! Luck to all!!!
  

  10.5.2006 13:05 #3

• jAmEsTn

  i could of used this about a week ago... i installed the XviD codec on my machines just this last week ;)

  10.5.2006 18:06 #4

• sisph

  I'm pretty familiar with codecs and just looked at it out of curiosity. I must say it serves as a good refresher course so it not only helps out newbs but serves as another good source for older users.
  
  Keep it up.

  10.5.2006 23:37 #5

• iccee

  Constant learning keeps me smart...
  
  Thanks for this...

  11.5.2006 07:27 #6

• flyingv

  I downloaded the AVI program this morning and it worked well with a program my son downloaded last night. We wouldn't have been able to view it without it. Thanks again for the lesson!

  11.5.2006 12:05 #7

• biggermac

  All you really need for AVI formatted movie clips is a video card that has a TV out slot on it. Some of these are pretty inexpensive these days.
  
  Mt video card has a S-Video output connector or it, and I just use a S-Video cable from the computer to the TV. The only noticeable viewing "glitch" vs a normal DVD seems to be that scenes that are very dark, like night time scenes, can be blotchy instead of smoothly distributed dark shades.

  12.5.2006 00:30 #8

• steve11

  have been using VLC MEDIA PLAYER for months, great program,
  
  started off by using codec packs for window$ media player, but had some problems with system stability when using them
  
  VLC is a great little program, i promise you - if you use it - youll never go back to using meida player!!

  12.5.2006 12:56 #9

• tpbos1

  High,
  I tried Avi2DVD. When I load the AVI file I get the message "floating point division by zero" avi2dvd then freezes and I have to restart my computer,,,,,,,,,,any ideas.
  Tony

  13.5.2006 03:27 #10

• j0j081

  "i could of used this about a week ago... i installed the XviD codec on my machines just this last week ;)"
  
  if you are only watching videos DivX looks nicer.

  14.5.2006 06:35 #11