I have done the following things, in no particular order:
Updated the codec (as specified on these boards)
Moved the movie files to HD (and pointed the registry to them of course)
Tried replacing the movie
Tried gypt (it does nothing, it helped me past bugenhagen though)
Tried using software mode
I've been having a lot of trouble with the movies...
Gypt got me past the bugenhagen lab crash.
I got past the tiny bronco crash by replacing the jairofal.avi movie file.
Oh and if I alt+tab, I always always crash at the start of my next random battle, but not on boss battles, such as the one against palmer, weird huh?
I'm running on Windows XP professional SP1
AMD 2800+ XP
Geforce4 ti4200 with the last omega driver to support it, newer regular nvidia drivers don't add anything to it anyway, only support newer cards.
1 gig ram 400mhz