Hi

New user here, noob question.

I started to download an avi last night, and I did a preview but all I could was sound, and some very occasioanal glipses of video but mainly the video was greyed out.

When I came down this morning the avi had completed and it plays fine, althought it's not the avi it was meant to be at all which was weird based on it's popularity and name etc but anyway..

Questions is any reason my preview function should not work but the entire avi is fine?

You might need codecs for your player? Which player are you using? Below is a link to different codec packs & also VLC player (free & with built in codecs)!
Codecs & VLC

Before download, look up a file with Bitzi. If it's been rated then you'll get an idea of content & quality... hopefully won't end up with another misnamed one
How to use Bitzi

Wow that was quick thank you.

When I click on the preview feature it auto opened Real Player on my PC

When I view the entire AVI it also opens Real Player

When I tried to preview it it made me auto install some new codecs which I did, but what I found odd is that preview would stil not work after that yet the full avi plays perfectly well.

Thanks for the bitzi tip, I will check that out am a bit green to this whole process. Seemed strage as it seemed to be the most popular version of this file, must have been a few mifffed people waking up this morning ^^

I am going to download the VLC player for future use.

Just used the right click advanced Bitzi menu option on the avi I downloaded , great tool thanks, clearly told me it was not what it said it was.

Live and Learn..