I've never had any look playing video I record from my Canon camera. Heck, even the video converters error out from the file. But it does work with .avi files..I've noticed it's only the canon recorded .avi files that I have that choke on the conveter.

i have an SD1000, the AVI's use MJPEG compression, even to edit or play that on windows sometimes u need the MJPEG decoder/encoder

I have a Canon A720 IS. mplayer will play the Canon video well if I record the video on the Canon at 320 x 240. If I use 640 x 480 mplayer does not play it. I did a pretty extensive search and found a couple of commercial conversion software packages that will convert the 640 x 480 video to lower resolution which works with mplayer. As I recall they cost about $30 US. I did not find any free software that would convert the Canon AVI files.

First, you don't need to format the SD card in the NIT first. Apparently it can "see" the card, it just can't play your Canon's avi files.

Since you have the Canon encoding at a size greater than the NIT can handle, it makes sense to me that they don't play. And for your on-the-road circumstances, it sounds like you aren't going to convert the files unless you do it in the N800 itself.

Nobody in this thread has come up with a way to do the conversion within the NIT. But it sounds like you can set preferences with the Canon to make 320 x 240 movies. So why don't you just do that when you want to watch them on the NIT. Other, larger-format movies you could upload to the 'net via the NIT for later viewing.

BTW, you don't have to worry about internet cafes and identity security if you aren't doing things like using your password to check your bank account. So it would be safe to use them; the problem is that the computers you get to use almost certainly aren't going to have the conversion software you need.

well, i'll find out if canola or mplayer will make this 300 mp4 movie the most enjoyable, should be ready by the morning[IMG][/IMG]

ahh, canola kept skipping the 300 mp4 movie, to the next movie when selected, but the native media player handles it with ease!

I don't know if it's too late to help but I found that if I had an Avi file, I just renamed it to .mpg and pasted the file onto the N800 card and when I ran it, it played perfectly.
There was also a file that was on my hard drive that was called (filename).avi.mpg and that played on the N800 too. So also did a movie straight from my Panasonic Camera that is an Apple .mov So I think you've either got to convert the files that won't play into mpg1 format. Lots of free applications do this on the PC. Or do as others have rightly said here, to use the Nokia Converter to make it compatible.
There seems little quality loss in the re-formatting of the movie file.

Hope that was helpful and not too late. Try renaming the avi as .mpg after all an avi is an mpg but it's different compression and probably slightly different codecs too.
Plado