I have this video file, supposed to be an Xvid Avi file, but it's encoded with the new vodei codec. Before installing it, i searched around a bit to see if people had anything to say about it, and unfortunately the majority of them weren't positive. Even the ones that were, admitted that even though it's supposed to be freeware, when you start watching a video, about every 15 minutes a nag screen pops up, and after ignoring it 5 or 6 times you can't play anything with it anymore unless you buy it. I found some fixes for ripping it out of the vodei codec and into a regular avi, but they are all for the older pre-2.0 versions of vodei. This file is encoded with the 2.0 version, and so far I haven't found a working solution.

Did you try playing that video file using the VLC Player? If not, get it at:

http://www.videolan.org/

This program can play a lot of video files that require codecs. I have never heard about the vodei codec, but hopefully VLC can handle it as well

I tried VLC. It won't even play the file. The position marker flicks along the bar, but no video window opens. KMplayer at least reads the avi header, and plays the 5 second promo which flashes the message that I need the vodei codec. I haven't found a working fix for it yet, so what i was thinking of doing is just use vmware to run a virtual copy of windows in which i will install the vodei codec and try then to convert it to a regular avi file, and then i should be able to take it out of the virtual machine and it should play properly. At least i hope it's this simple.

I would also take a look at the below for encoding it and playing on other video players:

http://www.vladd44.com/video/vodei.php

I tried that workaround previously. Actually that one looked the most promising of all the workarounds, but it only works with videos encoded with vodei 1.9 or earlier. Since this is a 2.0 release I was stuck with it, but installed vodei in a virtual OS, then used Dr. DivX to reencode the file. Still was tagged with that vodei garbage, so took the DivX output and ran it through NeroVision, exported as DVD quality Mpeg, and then it seems to have removed the protection. It plays fine on other computers without the vodei codec installed. The installer though does seem to leave a lot of junk behind. Can't tell if it's malicious or not --- I would think not --- but still not something I would install on my actual workstation. Thanks for the tips tho!