The first step in trying to repair corrupted video files is to view the technical and tag data of that file. The best way to do that is with a free, open-source program called MediaInfo. This program provides a unified display of the most relevant technical and tag data for both video and audio files.

The MediaInfo data display includes:

Container: format, profile, commercial name of the format, duration, overall bit rate, writing application and library, title, author, director, album, track number, date, duration…
Video: format, codec id, aspect, frame rate, bit rate, color space, chroma subsampling, bit depth, scan type, scan order…
Audio: format, codec id, sample rate, channels, bit depth, language, bit rate…
Text: format, codec id, language of subtitle…
Chapters: count of chapters, list of chapters..

MediaInfo is the flagship product of the MediaArea software company with 4,000 downloads per day. They also have created individual programs for embedding and editing various video files such as MOV, AVI, WAVE.

But MediaInfo will not repair the file. For that you may have to ask for help in various forums like Videohelp or Creative Cow. MediaInfo will provide enough information to explain and properly diagnose the problem before you should even try to repair corrupted video files.

But before trying any repair, be sure you make a backup of this file using a different name.

You may want to start with the VLC Media Player which I highly recommend as your default player. The VLC Player comes with a build in feature that repairs broken AVI files. You can configure VLC to automatically or mass fix damage AVI files. VLC is simply the best video player in the world. It is also good at converting video files, screen recording, webcam recording and a lot more.

Here are a couple other programs which can repair corrupted video files:

Digital Video Repair
Repair Video Master

You may also want to learn more about metadata for video which is a related issue. See Metadata For Video.