Generally speaking, if an AVI file contains a VLC incompatible video codec, it will fail to play in VLC. You just need to add the missing AVI codec to the VLC and it will play AVI naturally then. The most simple and effortless way to rectify this is to download and install the AVI codec to the VLC to make it 'complete'. We have solutions to how to open AVI files in VLC media player and will let you still be able to stream AVI files on VLC or other media player. If an AVI file contains a video stream that uses a more modern codec for compression, VLC may not be able to play it because it can't decompress that particular codec as a consequence.īut there is no need for too much worry. For instance, the video stream could be compressed using the DivX, Xvid, H.264, VP9 or MPEG-4 codec. It matters because the format for the audio or video stream can be different inside the AVI container.

This means an AVI file contains audio and video data streams that can be played together in sync. Investigating from the root cause, AVI, short for aka Audio Video Interlaced, is a very old container format created by Microsoft in 1992.

This is because VLC is not compatible with the AVI codec that is used to compress the file. You may already come across with messages saying that VLC cannot play the AVI file as the codec was not correct. You must be awfully interested to learn why on the earth that VLC cannot play AVI files natively.

Part 4: Another Powerful AVI Player - Leawo Blu-ray Player.

Part 3: Convert AVI Files to VLC-compatible Format.

How to open avi files on windows