Media Player · Windows 10 and 11
Play AVI, DivX and other older videos
Camcorder clips, films from the 2000s and old downloads often come as AVI with DivX or Xvid inside, or as WMV and FLV. Not every app on a new PC opens them. Octoolo's Media Player does, by turning the picture into H.264 as it plays.
How to play an AVI file
- 1
Open the Media Player
Open Media Player in Octoolo (it downloads FFmpeg once, 77 MB, the first time).
- 2
Open the AVI
Drop the file or its whole folder onto the window, or press Open files.
- 3
Watch it
It starts within a moment. The line under the title says Made playable as it plays and where: your graphics card, Windows' encoder or the processor.
What is inside an AVI
AVI is only the box. What matters is the video inside it, and in old files that is usually MPEG-4 Part 2 (sold as DivX, or made by Xvid), sometimes Motion JPEG from a camera, or older codecs still. The sound is often MP3 or PCM. WMV and ASF hold Windows Media Video and Audio; FLV holds Flash video from old websites.
FFmpeg reads all of these. The Media Player turns the picture into H.264, which every PC decodes with little effort, and the sound into AAC, while the film plays.
Smooth playback without a copy
- The picture is encoded on your graphics card (NVIDIA, AMD or Intel) when it has an encoder, otherwise by Windows or the processor, at up to 1080p on the processor.
- Interlaced video from TV recordings and camcorders is deinterlaced, so moving edges do not comb.
- Nothing is written to the disk: FFmpeg makes only what is about to play, and waits when enough is ready.
- Seeking starts it again where you click, at the exact second.
Keep a copy that plays everywhere
For a file you will send or play on a TV, make a real MP4 once: AVI to MP4, WMV to MP4 and FLV to MP4 convert whole folders at a time.
Questions, answered
Do I need the DivX or Xvid codec installed?
No. FFmpeg decodes them itself, and nothing is installed into Windows.
Is the quality lower when it is made playable?
Barely. The picture is encoded again at a generous bit rate, at its own size up to 1080p or 4K, so it looks like the original. The file itself is not touched.
Does it play AVI files with several sound tracks?
Yes. When there is more than one, the Sound track button lets you choose.
AVI player, and 16 more apps.
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