How to Repair Damaged AVI Video Files

Nowadays, AVI files are quite common and used by everyone to share songs and movies. But what is an AVI? AVI stands for Audio Video Interleave, which is a digital container format used to store audio and video content for playback on various digital media players using applications like Microsoft Windows Media Player or VLC on platforms like Windows, macOS, and BSD.

Sometimes, however, they can become corrupted and you are unable to play them. AVI files, like other video formats, can become damaged.

For example, you may encounter problems with some videos recorded from a digital camera or laptop. After trying to play them, you find that the movies do not work properly, so you need to learn how to fix corrupted AVI video files.

But how do you tell if a video file is corrupted? What are the signs of a corrupted video file, anyway? A damaged file can have several kinds of errors.

Sometimes, you may receive an error message that a video file won't play. The video and audio may be out of sync, there may be no video and only audio working, or the audio may be distorted or missing. If the video plays, it may do so with skips, stalls, flickering, or breaking up. The picture quality may be pixelated, grainy, or blurry. The video may stop playing altogether after a while.

What could be the reasons for corruption in AVI video files?

An AVI file can get corrupt due to several reasons. A corrupted index in the AVI file is one of the major causes for corruption. Issues with the hard drive, electromagnetic interference, power failure, etc., can also lead to corruption.

Some issues might be related to the way the video file is handled. For example, the video file could be incomplete. The AVI video file might have got corrupted during downloading or transferring process due to interruptions. Power outage during video editing can also lead to a corrupted AVI file.

Other issues that can lead to AVI corruption are related to storage. Damaged sectors on your hard disk can corrupt an AVI file. Electromagnetic interference can damage your data and corrupt your AVI files. Viruses, malware, and other instability factors can cause corruption of any kind of data on your system, including AVI files. Any sort of damage to the storage device can also affect AVI files.

Repair corrupted AVI video files using Video Repair Tool

<a href="/repair-tools/video-repair.html">Fixo Video Repair Tool</a> is a powerful utility that can repair corrupted AVI videos on Windows 32-bit and 64-bit systems. This tool is capable of fixing various types of errors in AVI files, including missing or lost video frames, damaged and broken video clip links, missing audio tracks, missing video streams, and more. Additionally, it's user-friendly. This repair tool can also fix corrupted photos and documents.

Step 1: Launch Fixo on your local PC. Click on “Video Repair” and then add the corrupt MP4/MOV/AVI/MKV/3GP/FLV/MKV/WMV video file by clicking on “Add Video”.

Step 2: Move the pointer on the video and click the “Repair” button to start the single video repair process. Click “Repair All” to fix all videos.

Select the video to repair

Step 3: Wait a few minutes for the software to fix the corrupted video. Preview the video by clicking the Play button. If you want to save an individual video, click the "Save" button next to the play icon. To save all repaired videos, click "Save All."

Step 4. If the quick fix fails, you should use the Advanced Repair mode. Click on “Advanced Repair” and add a sample video. Hit “Confirm” to proceed.

Step 5: You will see a detailed list of corrupted and sample videos. Click on "Repair Now" to initiate the advanced video repair process. Once done, you can preview the video and then click on the "Save" button to save the repaired video file to an appropriate directory.

Repair Damaged AVI Video Files Using VLC Media Player

VLC Media Player is a free and open-source media player available for multiple platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD, and Solaris. It supports a wide variety of video formats, DVDs, audio CDs, and various streaming protocols.

This media player can also convert video, audio, and image files. VLC is available for most operating systems, and includes many codecs, so it can play almost any video or audio file without needing extra codecs.

VLC is not just a great media player, but also a powerful video editor. You can use its video editing tools to fix damaged video files.

You can test VLC's repair capabilities by trying to transcode an AVI video file. However, in some cases, the transcoding process may not be able to restore the video's playability.

How to Repair Corrupted AVI Video File Step by Step

1. Open VLC on your device. You'll need to access “Media.” From there, click “Convert/Save.”

Step 2. The “Add” option will appear. Use this to add the video that you want to transcode.

Step 3: Fill in the “Destination” box with the name and location of your new file.

Step 4. When you're done, click on “Convert/Save.” A new window will pop up. From the “Profile” list, select the desired input codec.

Step 5. To customize the settings in a configuration file, click Edit Selected Configuration File. You can create new configuration files or delete old ones, if you like.

Step 6. After selecting your encoding profile, click "Start." VLC will take care of the rest.

Can damaged files be recovered?

All modern technologies rely on billions of lines of code. The same is true for the encoding of video frames. With every bit recorded, accessed, or transmitted, there is a chance that something will go wrong.

Using the right tools, it is possible to analyze and decode each bit encoded within a video frame, to identify and correct any errors in the encoding. A common example is checking the metadata of a video file, which can be used to fix indexing errors based on the recording device.

The process of restoring corrupted video files in VLC Media Player is similar to playing them. VLC Media Player uses a special codec to play video files, and this codec is also used to fix damaged video files. It reads the bits, checks for errors, and makes corrections.

Sometimes, fixing a video file is as simple as re-encoding it with another codec. VLC's transcoding capabilities are powerful enough to read, play, and decode many errors in an AVI video file. However, this works on the AVI file directly and may affect its long-term integrity.

More advanced tools, such as a video repair software, work differently. For instance, a professional repair tool can clone the original file and fix it from several sources without corrupting the AVI archive.

Conclusions

If your file is corrupted, or the video you want to watch won't play, your best bet is to try to repair it.

Tools like VLC Media Player have the option to repair damaged AVI files, but they have limitations. For example, this process may not fix your video file as expected.

VLC can also directly modify AVI files, potentially corrupting them further. It's not the best tool for very damaged videos.

However, if you have no idea how this process works, it's high time to find an easier solution. The tool provides you with the right program. It is a diagnostic and repair tool that can help you fix a corrupted video or file.