Can't play .avi files

[markymark64]

I just recently installed the vlc player and everything was going fine. I was watching a few .avi clips that I had on my machine and I had a bit of trouble with my open browser. Suddenly my video was freezing and I was forced to close everything down. I rebooted my machine but now when I look all of the .avi files on my machine have been greyed out in vlc media player. I've tried going to another location where I have a few files but it won't play any of them. I'm guessing vlc player locked all of the files of this type and is not allowing me to play them. Does anyone know how I can fix this? I've tried using a different output but that doesn't seem to help. Thoughts?

[markymark64]

Ok, here's some more information for my troubleshooters. Someone told me to try to drag a drop an avi file into the player, which I did. Unfortunately, what I got was clear sound with no controls and no picture. I'll pop in a dvd next and see if it will play it. This is so frustrating because I use cyberlink powerdvd on my windows partition with no problem. I am a newbie to ubuntu but totem plays my videos fine. I'm just trying to figure out what I did to cause this problem and how to fix it. Is there anyone out there who can help me with this?

[markymark64]

Ok, well vlc media player will play my dvd's so I guess I'm stuck using totem for avi files unless someone can give me a suggestion on how to fix this issue.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Reset your preferences. If it does not work, try to reset the plugins cache. But it very much seems like your VLC is not installed correctly.

[markymark64]

Remi, your solution didn't work either. I'm not sure what the problem is. I even downloaded the latest update and still no cigar. For some reason it sees my avi files as unplayable and will not allow me to click on any of them. I even deleted the vlc folder with all of the original settings per a comment from another linux guy on another website but still everything is greyed out. Not sure why this is happening because everything was working perfectly until last night when my browser froze. Go figure. It's basically locked all of my files and won't unlock them. Anyway, thanks for trying. I'm hoping between a few of you someone will have the solution. Oh, and I've even uninstalled, rebooted and reinstalled.

[markymark64]

Ok, I just found a solution kind of. Sorry for the bad english. I guess I should have mentioned that my avi files are on a non linux partition. I tried copying an avi file to my home folder in videos and then clicked on it and it started playing. For some reason vlc has marked any video files on my other drives as unplayable or hidden. I think this is a linux setting. Any thoughts on how I can "unhide" my files from a windows partition?

[markymark64]

Ok, this wasn't really a solution but a workaround. When I copied a video file to my video folder I right clicked and selected vlc media player to play the file. When it did I just assumed it was fixed but when i try to open a folder in vlc whether it's on my linux partition or windows it shows my avi and windows files greyed out. Totem doesn't do this so it must be some quirk with VLC. I'm just not sure what. lol

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

What is the file system on your video folder?

[Roddney]

Hello,
I have this same problem. Since VLC 1.1.8 I can't play any AVI video (DIVx MPEG 4 version 3 and 5). I use Ubuntu 10.10 and now Ubuntu 11.04 Beta 2 with VLC 1.1.9. My friend use Debian with VLC 1.1.7 its same. My file system is Ext4 and other disk have NTFS but problems are both. We have diferrent version of Xorg.server (in Ubuntu 11.04 is v1.10). I need fix it because now I can't use VLC. Totem player working corectly. Thanks for help