when you have a video clip that you cannot skip around in how do you fix it? i have a AVI file that plays fine but I cannot skip anywhere within the movie.

if you can not jump around in the file it is because the file does not have key frames. It is fixable, but not easily. You need to decompress the file. and recompress it with key frames.

If you don't know what key frames are, here's a quick explanation...

so in a compressed movie there are key frames and delta frames, the first frame will always be a key frame, which is basically just a regular 2d still image. The key frame is usually followed by several delta frames before the next key frame. A delta frame is a partial image, basically it only shows the parts of the image that have changed since the last frame (delta is the symbol for change). So in order to skip to a delta frame you have to start at a key frame and then render all the successive delta frames up to the one you want. Most movies files will have at least one key frame a second if not more, but the more key frames you have the bigger the final file is. So sometimes people will produce a movie with only a single key frame(the first frame) and you can't easily skip through it, but it will be very compact.

that all make sense?

Yes, that makes sense. Thanks for the explanation.

I have a movie that supporters of the Iraq war simply must see, but I wanted to fix it up a bit so people could skip around. It is just under an hour so people should be able to watch it in one sitting since I doubt I could fix it the way you described. I'm going to upload it tonight and post a link here tomorrow (most likely). It is a killer movie against the pro war argument.

Yeah a one hour video would likely take about an hour or two to decompress, plus another 2-3 hours to recompress with keyframes, not to mention you need the right software...

Right. I think I have software for it but it wouldn't be worth it. The video looks and sounds great and is about 350MB. I'll upload it tonight. I really want to hear what people like RHS, Nebraskaboy, yourself and others have to say.

Try watching it with another program, I have run into this where MS media player will not allow you to skip ahead but watching the same file with another player will allow skipping ahead. It doesn't work everytime but it works more than it doesn't

That's usually due to the limitations of the CODECs installed with Windows Media Player. The most likely reason would be key frames, especially if it's an AVI file, that would indicate it's likely a DVD Rip.