FF VII movies in vista

[Mister Pig]

I have been reading quite a bit on here.  Now I'm to the point where everything fails.  I bought the game from a friend who doesn't want it anymore so i thought i would give it a go.  (It's been 11 years since I played it last...)  First I wanted it on my laptop, just because it's easier to use.  The game kept crashing when I tried to open it.  So I installed it on my home PC and it works fine so far.  I also installed the npc patch, high res patch, and 1.02.  Compatability: 98/Me on both systems.

Now when I go to the movie folder, on Vista, at first the movies just showed generic movie files with .avi on them.  i try to play them, and I get the error that it cannot be played, and WMP closes.  On xp, the movie folder shows the clips, and I can watch them.

I then tried the tm20dec.ax codec and the ff7betap_1 installs, and with them I can hear the audio from any clip, but no video.  I didn't try playing the game too far with that configuration, only to the "new game" screen.

I recently installed k-lite codec pack, which has the WMP classic, and then I could watch the movies on vista; but when trying to start the game,the game would freeze.

Now when I go to the movie folder, i can see the clips, but they will not play.  I have tried nero showtime, WMP, and Qtime.

I think that windows media player11 has something to do with it.  Is there a way to downgrade it to 9 or 10?
Does anyone have any suggestions to try?

Laptop:                                                 PC:
HP dv6325us                                         P4 2.4G Biostar MB
Vista Home 32                                       Xp home 32
turion TL-52                                          512M ram
1G ram                                                 integrated video
nvidia go6150

[kraken]

You can either remove the k-lite codec pack, or go into the settings and tell it to not handle trumotion.  Then, install the trumotion codec here: http://rapidshare.com/files/20358211/TrueMotion_codec.zip.html

And don't set any compatibility modes when you run ff7.

[Mister Pig]

Well I've been trying some more things, and reading more.  First I uninstalled divx, and tried the game, no dice.  Then i reinstalled divx, current version tried game, no dice.  then i tried different configurations of installed codecs with very unhappy results... I did manage to get the movie to play in wmp and showtime, but with no video.  then i turned to trusty afterdawn.com and found: http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/codecs_and_filters/ffdshow.cfm the current version of ffdshow.  It includes vdub and a couple other goodies.  Now the movies play in wmp, and the game works.   

I uninstalled k-lite pack immediatly.  There's just too many options and makes it that much easier to mess something up big time.

I do notice that some of the videos have quite the saturation of colors.  I'm going to play with it a bit and see what i can do.  But first the hd patch is going in!