Unable to play an .avi file...

[J7N]

I have no way of telling for sure without the ability to see your system (I don't have Nero filters and have no intention to install them, if even on a test system), or the video file.

I think your system is detecting some bit of MPEG-4 inside your [perhaps completely valid] AVI file. This is very unlikely, but maybe your AVI has AAC audio, or Mp3 that somebody by mistake has muxed into an MP4. Examination with a hex editor would shed some light on this.

It has happened before that MPEG-2 video and MP3 audio, which in reality were part of a movie, were detected by the system as elementary streams. Files got played back with sporadic noise, where the container metadata or other streams were interleaved.