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AVI, a short for Audio Video Interleave, is a file format designed to store both audio and video data in a standard package to allow its simultaneous playback. Created by Microsoft in November 1992, AVI is one of the most commonly used video formats. A variation of the AVI format, called DV AVI, is used to create Digital Video that can be transferred losslessly (without loss of quality) between computers and camcorders.

AVI is a file format, but unlike other formats like MP3 or JPEG, AVI is a container format, meaning it can contain video audio compressed using many different combinations of codecs. So while MP3 and JPG can only contain a certain kind of compression, an AVI file may carry audio/visual data in almost any compression scheme, including:

Full Frames (Uncompressed)

Intel Real Time Video

Indeo

Cinepak

Motion JPEG

Editable MPEG

VDOWave

ClearVideo / RealVideo

QPEG

MPEG-4

and others.

AVI all look the same on the "outside", but on the "inside", they may be completely different.

So, the AVI format is dependent upon "codecs" (an acronym for compressor / decompressor). Codecs serve two purposes: they tell your computer how to encode (or compress) a video file when you save the file, and they tell your computer how to decode (or play) the file when you open the file. Since the same codec is used for both compressing and playing the file, the choice of which codec to use is extremely important. If the codec you use to compress your file is not installed on your user's computer, your user will not be able to play the video.

Back to the list of formats