.avi to DivX?

[baseballer10p]

I just bought a Creative Zen Vision: M and I have some .avi files that I want to put on it. However, it doesn't work with avi. I need to convert the files to divx. Is there any way that this is possible? If there is, if anyone could point me in the right direction, I would be grateful. I've searched on google, but I don't really understand what the places I saw are trying to tell me. Thanks!

[baseballer10p]

Ok, I've done some reading and it seems that an avi file is a file that can hold a mpeg-4 format. I guess I don't really want to convert avi to something else, I want to get rid of the avi container. Is there any way that I can do that?

[mojo]

What container and codecs will your Zen accept? AVI is just a container, and the vast majority of avi files are already using the divx codec or its open source cousin, xvid. There technically is such thing as a divx container, but it's just avi with a couple extras like subtitles and a menu system and otherwise works exactly like the avi container.

Edit: From some quick googling it looks like it should support avi files using divx or xvid fine, so chances are the files you're trying aren't using a supported codec. Use this tool to find out what codecs are hiding inside those files.

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/AVIcodec.htm

[baseballer10p]

I figured it out. I checked what it was encoded with and it is Xvid. My Zen accepts both Xvid and DivX. It usually just lets me import .avi files directly to the Zen. This time though, I had to convert the .avi to DVD files using this guide. I then converted the DVD files back to an .avi file. This time, the .avi file transferred to my Zen. Thanks for you help mojo.