AVI Chunk Viewer & AVI Splitter

[OneBigNewbie]

I have downloaded an avi file, and whenever I play it with Winamp, I encounter a message (screen) test as follows:

AVI CHUNK VIEWER
this avi file was not prepared for sequential reading, the alternative 'Avi Splitter ' will now let the default one handle it. The complete reinterleaving of this file is strongly recomended before burning it onto a slow media like a cd-rom.

This is a bit scary for me, because it seems to be a warning of some sort about burning the avi file on CD (although I really wanted to burn a DVD using the file). Is this a hoax or a genuine warning ?

If it is a genuine warning, how can I fix this file ?

And, when I play this file with Windows Media Player (Version 9), why is the warning not shown ?

I appreciate your help.

Thanks

[liam858]

I have downloaded an avi file

Where from? Got a link?

Check these out:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=101972

http://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/t249837.html


Liam

[fink]

Like Liam points out it's a real message. You could burn it to DVD if you want but it looks from the message that the audio is out of sync with the video. They're suggesting you sync them up before you waste a DVD on it. (not a fast or easy process unfortunately)

[OneBigNewbie]

Thank you nice people !!!

I have used DivFix to fix the avi file as Liam suggested. It did not take more than 5 minutes for my avi file (with size of 708,000+ KB).

And, before the fix, the AVI Chunk Viewer showed that the 'bad' file (from the graph) had the video & audio out of sync only at the last 2% of the entire file. Could that be the reason why it took such a short time (5 minutes), instead of what the comments from the DivFix site said it could be a "long" process...

I did not know what was happening with VirtualDub 1.6.14 that I used to fix the file, in the middle of the fix, it showed an error message that my file was corrupt... (I just aborted the whole thing, and used DivFix instead).

Thank you again !!!!

[fink]

You're lucky it was so fast. I tried fixing a similar sized avi once and gave up after the program I used (different one) sat and sputtered for over two hours and accomplished nearly nothing.

[liam858]

You're Welcome.


Liam

[ProfessorU]

It sounds like a mux (multiplexing) issue. 'Interleaving' is how the video and audio data are encoded into the file. Usually it goes in blocks:
1 sec of vid, 1 sec of audio, 1 sec of vid, etc. This makes it easy for a slow machine to 'keep up' without jumping around in the file, and if it falls behind, it's much easier to catch up.
But the spec allows it to be encoded any way you want. So if you're encoding video on the fly, some issues might make those blocks change sizes. For most modern computers playing back standard-def video this shouldn't be a problem. Winamp is just trying to optimize your experience.