Codec Chaos

ok, heres my problem, i downloaded an avi from the internet, when i tried to play it, it said i didnt had the right codec. Because of that i (stupidly) downloaded one of those "all codecs pack" and installed them (plus i messed up with the 'Macintosh HD/Library/Quicktime' and the 'Library/Quicktime' folders, so at the end i didnt knew which files went into wich folder). The thing is that i ended up finally playing the movies, but now quicktime is reeeally slow, takes like 2 minutes to load a movie and freezes mi Finder when it loads the preview of the movie.

Thats why I decided to start from scratch again, i want to delete all the codecs, reinstall quicktime and make it work normally again. the thing is, I dont know which are the "default codecs" that come with Leopard or if by deleting all the codecs i have (from both of the previously mentioned folders, Right now i have all of the same codecs in both folders) i will screw up my computer or something.

Which codecs should i keep and wich should i delete, can i delete all of them without problems, or what could i do?

You can delete the lot, they are all extra codecs, in addition to the core Quicklime components

The core components are in Harddisk > System > Library > Quicktime

I would recomend not uninstalling QuickTime, my friend tryed that. Don't do it. The problem is that QuickTime is so integrated with the os it is really hard to get it all off (even with AppZapper) and... Yeah, bad idea.

Try updating quicktime, or re-installing (but don't actually try to remove the app manually). Then install a free codec pack called Perian (it is just a preference pane panel- it wont mess up your codecs or libraries or anything, I promise!).

This is what I use, and it has just about everything, except windows media format (for that you need Flip4Mac, which is also free).

Or, you could just get VLC player, which plays every single file format known to man, all in one player. And again, it's free.

Perian http://perian.org/
Flip4Mac Windows Media Quicktime Componentshttp://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx
VLC Player http://www.videolan.org/

updating or reinstalling won't overwrite the plugins folder though. So wouldn't SideshowFreak want to empty that folder, then reinstall?