here's a good technical question to start the day:

i shoot avi clips with a canon powershot g2 camera

i have tried every media player program for the axim i have been able to find that claims to play avi files

but with all of them, i get an incompatible video format error message

does anyone know why the avi from a canon g2 is different from standard avi

also, does anyone have a foolproof avi player they can recommend that WILL paly these avi clips?

i have gotten around the problem by converting the avi to wmv which saves space by compressing the file and then plays through windows media player

but i still would like to know why the canon avi is incompatible with pocket tv, pocket divx and pocket music and video player

also, i thought media player could play avi...does any one know anyhthing more about why it doesnt?

any ideas or leads would be much appreciated

thank you

I second that.

I don't think there is anything.

Perhaps convert to mpeg?

If you look in the Help file of the axim, it will tell you there, About Windows Media Player, that it can play files with .asf, .wma, .wmv, and .mp3.
By the instructions, it reads on the bottom of page 54:
http://www.powershot.com/powershot2/pdf/g2/G2-SSG.pdf

DO NOT double-click a movie file (.avi extension) in the windows Explorer to play it. That will start WMP, w/c may not support this file type.

It seems that this typ of .avi might have a special coding where only QuickTime player is the only program that can play it. You might want to ask Cannon's Tech support.

 

Here's what i'm gonna do:

Take my AVI's with my PocketDV2 to CF.
Transfer the Movies to my computer.

Convert to MPG with:
avi2mpg1
http://www.mnsi.net/~jschlic1/

OR

download AVIEdit:
http://www.am-soft.ru/aviedit.html

and try to reprocess the AVI files with a different codec.

I'm sure between these two methods something will work.
I'm at work atm, will try later and post results.

Here's what I found out (I also have a G2). The Canon does not create a "true" AVI video. It is a derivative called "motion-AVI". I don't know much about this format, although most desktop players that handle AVI will play both formats just fine.

That being said, there is only one PPC program that I know of that will play "motion-AVI" files.

PQView http://www.bitbanksoftware.com/PQV.html

I've seen it for myself - I was able to pop out the CF card from my camera, pop it into my Axim, and play the movie right away. It shows up as "MVI_0581.AVI" and it was a 7mb file. I left it on the CF card, put the card back in the camera, and was able to upload it to my desktop PC later that day.

Here's a Pocket PC Magazine review.