I have a bunch of movies and tv shows on my pc. Most are in .avi format. I plugged the N800 with the USB into the PC. It showed up a device. I dragged a tv show file to it and then went to play it on the N800. It shows the clip there including length, etc. The problem is that it won't play. It says 'file format not supported'. The manual says .AVI is supported. I am a NOOB. I must be missing something on this one.
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An additional question...
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When connected it takes all files you transfer and puts them on the 'external card'...not the 'internal card'. Looks like you cannot choose which card to drag stuff onto. How do I get stuff on the internal card?
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Thanks!!

install mplayer and you can watch .avi files. i have clerks II on my right now...

The problem is that *.avi is just a container file; there could be all sorts of stuff inside. The best way to find out (if you're using Windows, that is) what kind of video file resides in the avi container, is to right-click on the file (in Windows, obviously), select "properties" and go to the second tab (I don't know what it's named in English; I have a freaky foreign Windows). That'll tell you a.o. the codec used for video compression.

Mplayer still would not play the clip. The screen went dark for a minute, then came back to the select clip screen on the N800.
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The file has the following info on it...
**640 X 480
**128kbps
**MPEG Layer 3
**23 Frames/Second
**126kbps
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No idea how this impacts playing the clip. Do I need to convert it to MP4 or something like that???
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Thanks.

640x480 video may be a bit too heavy for normal playback with the current N800 firmware and current version of mplayer. Also a lot depends on the video codec. BTW, 128kbps seems to be an unrealistic number for such resolution, most likely it is not detected right.

You can press 'Report' button after video playback attempt in mplayer. It will show a detailed log with the information about your video file and all the relevant error messages.

You may have to transcode your video to the format better suitable for N800, check Media Converter.

Gspot/ will give you better information on the codecs used in your media file than Windows Media Player itself will.

I have a Media Converter with the following options:

MP4 - MPEG-4 Video (*.mp4)
3GPP - 3rd Generation Partnership Project (*.3gp)
3GPP2 - 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 (*3g2)
AAC - Advanced Audio Coding (*aac)
AC3 - Dolby Digital AC-3 (*.ac3)
ASF - Advanced Streaming Format (*.asf)
SUN AU Format (*.au)
AVI - Audio-Video Interleaved (*.avi)
DivX Movie (*.avi)
DVD (*.vob)
iPod (30G) MPEG-4 Movie (*.mp4)
iPod (60G) MPEG-4 Movie (*.mp4)
M4A - MPEG-4 Audio (*m4a)
MOV - Quicktime (*.mov)
MP2 - MPEG Layer-2 Audio (*.mp2)
MP3 - MPEG Layer-3 Audio (*mp3)
MPEG-1 Movie (*.mpg)
MPEG-2 Movie (*.mpg)
Mpeg 4 AVC Video Format (*.mp4)
OGG - Ogg Vorbis Audio (*.ogg)
PSP - PSP MPEG-4 Video (*.mp4)
PSP AVC Video Format (*.mp4)
RA - Real Audio (*.ra)
RM - RealVideo (*.rm)
Super VideoCD (*.mpg)
Video CD (*.mpg)
VOB - MPEG 2 PS Format (*.vob)
WAV - Waveform Audio (*wav)
WMA - Windows Media Audio (*.wma)
WMV - Windows Media Video (*.wmv)
XviD Movie (*.avi)


I have no idea which of these will work on the .avi clip I have. I can convert it to any of the above. Any ideas? It will not work currently. Thanks.