The avi codec question again

A colleague has emailed me several movies with names like "movie01.avi".
They're technical graphics stuff, produced from iterated computer
graphics calculations, not from any kind of video camera. They appear
with a QT icon on my desktop but trying to play them brings up the
"sorry, QT is missing a necessary software component . . . " dialog box,
and a blank white QT Player window. The Movie Info window's Format
field gives ", 444 x 348, Millions" (nothing before the first comma).

Searching Google and Apple Support site has yielded lots of confusion
but no obvious solution (for me, anyway). Is there a straightforward
way to play, or convert, these?

Mac iBook G4, OS 10.3.9, QuickTime Pro and QuickTime Player v 7.1.3.

Thanks . . .

In article <siegman-023587.08034312122006 DeleteThis @news.stanford.edu>,
AES <siegman DeleteThis @stanford.edu> wrote:

> Searching Google and Apple Support site has yielded lots of confusion
> but no obvious solution (for me, anyway). Is there a straightforward
> way to play, or convert, these?

AVI is just a wrapper; using "file" at the command line will give you a
better idea of the actual codec. The best bet for all kinds of video
formats is VLC:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html

--
My personal UDP list: 127.0.0.1, 4ax.com, buzzardnews.com, googlegroups.com,
heapnode.com, localhost, x-privat.org