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I am new to this forum and new to video editing. My goal is to develop short teaching videos for use in lectures and post on a website. Being a newbie I tried and ditched Windows MM several months ago, constant problems. I have searched this and other forums. My question has to do with the inability of Corel Video Studio pro X2 to allow me to import, edit and play .AVI files.

I have a simple cannon camera I am using to make clips. The only file format it supports is .AVI. These files and any other .AVI file from the internet cannot be brought into VSP. The native .AVI files play fine in Windows Media Player 11. The .AVI files can be converted to .wmv files and import and play fine in VSP. I really don¡¦t believe the problem is with the software or camera but with but I don¡¦t know and don¡¦t know who to ask.

I have read tons about the .AVI format and codecs. I am unsure if I should download and risk loading my computer with unneeded bloat without knowing what I am doing. It seems that I should be able to import these files and work with them in VSP. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Sorry for the post length. I have reached frustration levels. Thx eliterate

Find out what sort of avi it is, as avi is a container and not a file type.
http://www.myvideoproblems.com/Tutorials/avicodec.html
It can be one of over 800 different file types.
As WMP can play the file you have the right codec installed, so the type of file it is, is incompatible with VS, so converting it sounds the best option.

Thank you very much for the response.
went to the website, installed avicodec utility. dragged the file into the utilty and got the following result. V.codec name "Motion JPEG" A.1 Codec name "PCM" -- not sure what to do with this information. as mentioned in previous post conversion to .wmv works but is a pain. Understand .AVI is a wrapper but not sure what I need to do if the file wont play. Thanks

Ok -- so now we know at least that your Canon camera is a digital *still* camera, which, like mine, uses the MJPEG codec. So what VS needs is the MJPEG installed so it can get at it. Did you use the installation disc which came with the camera? When you install the drivers and associated software for it, that would normally also install the codec.

Firstly my normal reply to the avi issue is as follows:

You wrote:....It's an AVI file ......

Sorry but that doesn't help much.
There are a small handful of file extensions that describe that a computer file is a video. These include
avi, mpeg, mov, rm, wmv, qt, swf
Plus a few others.
Think of these as groups of a certain form of video, within those groups are lots of individuals. Liken this to animals, there are dogs, cats, snakes, birds, rodents and so on.
Within these groups are several types. For instance a dog can be a Poodle, Jack Russell, Alsatian, King Charles, Greyhound etc.

The term avi can mean any one of perhaps a hundred different types such as DV, MPEG4, uncompressed, MJPEG, DivX, Xvid, RLE, YUV, Cinepak and lots more.

You need to be more specific.

Next:
If you still have problems after Kens suggestion about using the installation disc to obtain the correct codec, then you could try converting the video to something more "VideoStudio Friendly" - either DV or MPEG2.
To do so you can try:
Super
This piece of FREE software converts almost any video format into almost any other video format. Very useful if you've downloaded DivX Xvid or MPEG4 files off the internet and then find you are having difficulty editing them due to their highly compressed nature.
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html