How to Fix AVI Files Unplayable Issue on QuickTime Player
AVI format is fully known as Audio Video Interleaved or audio-video interlaced format. It was launched by Microsoft Corporation in 1992 and is known along with Windows 3.1. The so-called audio-video interleaving is the ability to interweave video and audio for simultaneous playback. The advantage is that the image quality good and it can be used across multiple platforms, while the advantage is that the volume is too large and the compression standard is not uniform so that some media players can't play the AVI videos with early coding editing.
In summary, this is an open video format, or it can't be a format but a platform-like thing. For example, if an AVI video part is compressed with MPEG-1 and the audio part is stored with WAV, the file will be very large. It may occupy a few G spaces for a small movie; if it uses MPEG-4 and mp3 compression instead, the same movie may only account for about 100M.
In theory, there can be countless kinds of coding for the same AVI suffix. It is possible to use certain software to play a bunch of AVI videos, but only a part of the files can be played - it all depends on the decoder included in the software. Therefore, it is important to find a video player with a lot of all-round decoders to play.
What is AVI Files Unplayable on QuickTime and Why It Occurred
"My QuickTime player us not playing .avi files and says I need a codec on QuickTime. How could I fix this because I want to play these files with QuickTime." - A user from Apple Community
There are hundreds of users facing the problem of QuickTime not playing AVI files and searching for some quick solutions. Some users download all codecs but QuickTime still fails to play AVI files, and some user's QuickTime just shut off automatically. To cope with this issue, we need to figure out what caused this problem.
Does QuickTime support AVI?
When QuickTime opens an AVI file, it will check on which codec is used to decode the audio and video tracks. For example, an AVI file might contain video tracks encoded in the Cinepak codec and audio tracks encoded in the ALaw 2:1 codec. If both audio and video are compressed using a codec that QuickTime can use, the file will be played normally. If one or both of the audio and video files were created using a codec that QuickTime doesn't support, you might see a message like these:
QuickTime lacks the software needed to do this. Unfortunately, it is not used in the QuickTime server. You may have problems playing the video track in .avi because it can't find the compression program you need."
So what are the reasons for this problem?
If your QuickTime does not play AVI files, then it may because:
1. The codec your files using is incompatible with QuickTime.
2. Broken video header.
3. Your AVI Files are in an improper format.
4. Your AVI files are corrupted.
5. There are some errors with QuickTime.
6. There is a problem with your computer.
Now let's check some troubleshooting tips to fix AVI files unplayable in QuickTime.
Solutions to fix AVI unplayable in QuickTime
Solution 1. Download the required codec
If there is a codec issue between your AVI files and QuickTime, then you can try to get the recommended codec online.
Solution 2. Playing AVI with VLC instead of QuickTime
If your AVI files are still unplayable in QuickTime, just try to play them with another media player like VCL, which supports a wide range of audio and video decoders and file formats and supports DVD audio and video discs, VCD video discs and various streaming protocols.
Solution 3. Convert AVI to MP4, MOV, etc with VideoProc
If those two methods above do not work for you, then we sincerely suggest you convert the AVI files to MP4, MOV or other formats which is compatible with QuickTime.
To make this job done easily, VideoProc, an industry-leading video processing tool, is highly recommended. Because with it, the converting speed would be much faster than other similar tools on the market, owing to its Level-3 Hardware-Accelerated technology. Besides, it is also with easy and advanced editing features, quality-oriented media converter, and a variety of input/output formats. So why not download it now, and then follow the detailed steps below?
Step 1. Click the Video icon to enter the video processing window, where you are entitled to press the +Video button to load the AVI file to be converted. Or +Video Folder to add multiple AVI videos.
Step 2. Go to Target Format at the bottom and Select MP4 H.264 as the output format, which is acceptable by QuickTime.
Step 3. Click Browse to save the file to the destination folder and press RUN to begin encoding AVI to another format.
Final Words
That's all for the solutions to fix AVI is unplayable in QuickTime and the simplest way to solve it is converting your AVI files to other video formats. And VideoProc will always give a hand when you need to convert video format, edit video or download videos or record desktop screen. The earlier you download it, the more benefits you'll get!
