AM Software | AVI Diagnostic utility

AVIDiag is an utility that allows you to get an additional information about your system, related to video capture, editing and playback. You may need it before you contact AM Software customer support team. Of course you can use AVIDiag for your own needs at no charge, when you solve your problem, excluding the business environment. In other words, you shouldn't offer an ad-ware (or other non-free) online help desk based on AVIDiag's check results.

AVIDiag tests some system capabilities and generates a report that can be written to a text file. Also AVIDiag creates a file dump (in general, an avi file dump) and recognises few common codecs. This allows you to avoid sending huge avi files by e-mail to the support team - just send a dump file instead.

When you need it

Got a Cannot find VIDS:MJPG decompressor. message (there can be reported something other instead of 'MJPG')
After a 60%..80% of saving to new file you got Cannot read file. message
You can hear the sound but see no picture on playback
Edited a file previous week, but today AVIedit does not see it
Lost a codec
Finished hardware upgrade - now some clips have no picture
Recovered or reinstalled OS clean - but mediaplayer fails to play movies

How to use it

Just run it and hit Go! button, wait a few seconds. You will get log window filled with text. Save it to a file and examine it with your own eyes, or attach the file when writing an e-mail to us.

If AVIDiag hangs for some reason, (we never seen it screwed up, but we didn't run it on your system...), you may need to switch off some tests. We assume, when you clear some check box, you know what you're doing. If you skipped few tests, please mention this fact when writing us.

To see the suspicious avi file header dump, load the file using menu or Open icon. Also (if the codec is known to AVIDiag) there will be a short string that describes the codec used to create (compress) the file. This is important because you couldn't play avi file without an appropriate codec installed.

After you performed the tests, it is time to save log to a text file. It would be a good idea to save and compare these logs each time you install and/or remove any video related software. This will put you in control over the system.

Of course, it is not necessary to attach the generated log files each time you contact AM Software. However we highly suggest you to run this diagnostic software - just because you could read the report and could detect some problems even without our help, even before you send e-mail to us. This definitely will save your time and, probably, will make our support team life a bit easier :)

At least, the information gathered by AVIDiag will help us to help you.

It covers these sections:

system.ini list of descriptions, list of 16 and 32 bit codecs
load DLL test tries to load all the codecs listed in [drivers32]
capture drivers (VfW) enumerates all VfW capture drivers known to the system
Registry - AVIFile reports most important GUIDs related to AVI
Registry - Uninstall list of current software that could be uninstalled via Control Panel

AVIDiag 1.2 has few improvements over the previous build.

win2k/NT option allows you to verify list of codecs, that is not visible in [drivers32] section of system.ini file
mfc42.dll test lists all important dll's common to the system
pending dll's reports the state of misc dll's that may be envolved into running AVIedit or other video editing software

see the sample log file (1.1) download AVIdiag.zip 32 KB
see the W95OSR2 sample log file (1.2)
see the Win2000 (2195) sample log file (1.2)

Copyrights and distribution

AVIDiag is free for non-commercial use.

Copyrights to AVIDiag are exclusively owned by the author, Alexander Milukov, and AM Software. AVIDiag may not be rented or leased. It may be freely distributed provided the distribution package isn't modified. No person or company may charge a fee for the distribution of AVIDiag without written permission from the author.

No warranty is expressed or implied. Use AVIDiag at your own risk. The author will not be liable for any data loss or hardware damage while using or misusing the AVIDiag.

The user should not:
clone, emulate, any way reverse engineer, rent, lease, sell, or modify the program

If you do not agree with this license you should delete AVIDiag files and discontinue to use it.