The .avi movies have been compressed to get them down from around 10 Mbytes to a couple of hundred Kbytes.

The video capture software on my laptop uses something called the VDO decoder to do the compression. If you want to see the .avi movies you need to install this on your PC - it is around 470 Kbytes and will take a couple of minutes to download. (I don't know if you can get this decoder for Macs or unix machines - sorry!)

How to install the VDO decoder:

1. Click here to download the VDODecode30.exe file and store it on your hard disk (you will need to choose a suitable temporary location to save it when the "Save As..." window pops up).

2. When the file has finished downloading, locate the file (VDODecode30.exe) in the temporary location you chose in step 1 (use Windows Explorer to do this), and then double click it.

3. Follow the instructions on the screen (press OK when it asks you to).

4. That is it. Now you should be able to download and play the .avi movies.

If you have problems:

I have found that having the VDO codec installed can cause problems playing back other movie types - particularly moption jpeg. If this happens you should locate the file "vdo32_30.drv" (probably in C:\WINDOWS\system32 or somewhere similar - do a search for it [click start, search, files and folders] if you can't find it) and rename it to something like "vdo32_30.drv-old". This will disable the VDO codec and allow mjpeg movies to play. To get the VDO movies to play again rename it back to "vdo32_30.drv".