rename file pre-file *

In my opinion you should use Debian, but if you want to start with same more friendly you can use Ubuntu Server Edition + X Server + Gnome Desktop.

Which distro are you using?

I can suggest Convert-IT.
It was developed for Ubuntu, and it is just a front-end for mplayer, ffmpeg, imagemagick, ...

From my point of view you have to check:
1) MBR is well formed.
2) FILESYSTEM data structures have some errors (superblock).

If the system recognizes the Filesystem entry then the MBR should be correct (consider this assertion 80% true).

To check the filesystem data structures try the command fsck (see here http://linux.die.net/man/8/fsck).

If fsck fails to recognize the filesystem maybe data structures managed by kernel drivers are corrupted!!!
Superblock is the most important data structure to check.
Read also this: http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/understanding-unixlinux-filesystem-superblock.html

At this point the situation became very hard to solve.

First, you need to check if samba has been installed (sudo apt-get install samba). After, you have to configure samba service: add a new user (your user-id), add a network share.
Read this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SettingUpSamba

If you want to use some UI then try VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/features.html).
The best command line tool I know is ffmpeg (http://ffmpeg.org/)

I agree with Rubberman.
Also Look at Video4Linux project: http://linux.bytesex.org/v4l2/