AVI forma question?

My colleague was sent video from a red light camera in an AVI format but no other property information available – he opened it in MovieMaker and the resolution was 426 by 240. He is trying to read some information but none is visible or readible – it's too blurry. He contacted the sender, who has said information would be visible with a few tweaks. My guess is that this was a compressed format and not the original, and that no amount of tweaking would make the information readible. Any thoughts?