I am running a minimal install of debian lenny x86-64 with debian-multimedia enabled. I am having trouble with viewing avi files. I have mplayer installed and I always get tearing on the top 1/3 of the videos that I play. Ive tried using smplayer with filters and changing the output driver but i always get the same thing.

Also, whenever I try to install VLC, I can only get audio to play, and no video. I have looked around for solutions for both problems and I haven't found anything that works. Is there any way to either fix mplayer or vlc, or maybe there is another player where i wont have any of these problems? Thanks!

libxine provides....the complete infrastructure for a video/media player. It supports MPEG 1/2 and some AVI and Quicktime videos out of the box, so you can use it to play DVDs, (S)VCDs and most video files out there. It supports network streams, subtitles and even MP3 or Ogg files. It's extensible to your heart's content via plugins for audio and video output, input media, demuxers (stream types), audio/video and subtitle codecs.
While this package does not provide a GUI, building a user-interface frontend around this should be quite easy. The xine-ui and gxine packages each provide one for your convenience.
works for me

I assume it's some problem with your video drivers.
What gpu are you on and what drivers are you using?
And what video output for mplayer and vlc?
Do you use compiz as well?