wmv vs avi

I can play videos with a .wmv extension but when I try to play a video with
an .avi extension, I get something that looks like a kaleidoscope. I am
running XP Professional and Media 11.

Any suggestions?

You're seeing the default music visualisations in media player whichare shown

You're seeing the default music visualisations in media player which
are shown when the player thinks there is only audio in the file.

It is possible to have an AVI containing only audio, but uncommon.

Usually this means you are missing a decoder ("codec") required to play
back the content in media player.

Most often that is the DivX codec, especially if your video came from a
file sharing / movie sharing website. You can get that decoder into
media player by downloading and running the DivX player package from
http://www.divx.com/en/products/software/windows/divx

if that still does not help, you would  need to find out what codec was
actually used to make the video. The GSpot program from
http://www.headbands.com/gspot/ is useful here.

You can load the AVI file into that and it will tell you what codecs the
file requires for playback. Click the 'Render' buttons to do that once
you have opened the AVI fie in GSpot.

Then post here the message it shows about Video Codec and we can find
some deoder to get you running.

HTH
Cheers - Neil
------------------------------------------------
Digital Media MVP : 2004-2009
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs