AVI video format introduction and related free AVI converter software downloads.
AVI Format Introduction:
Audio Video Interleaved, known by its initials AVI, is a multimedia container format introduced by Microsoft in November 1992 as part of its Video for Windows technology. AVI files can contain both audio and video data in a file container that allows synchronous audio-with-video playback. Like the DVD video format, AVI files support multiple streaming audio and video, although these features are seldom used. Most AVI files also use the file format extensions developed by the Matrox OpenDML group in February 1996. These files are supported by Microsoft, and are unofficially called "AVI 2.0".
AVI is a derivative of the Resource Interchange File Format, which divides a file's data into blocks, or "chunks." Each "chunk" is identified by a FourCC tag. An AVI file takes the form of a single chunk in a RIFF formatted file, which is then subdivided into two mandatory "chunks" and one optional "chunk".
The first sub-chunk is identified by the "hdrl" tag. This sub-chunk is the file header and contains metadata about the video, such as its width, height and frame rate. The second sub-chunk is identified by the "movi" tag. This chunk contains the actual audio/visual data that make up the AVI movie. The third optional sub-chunk is identified by the "idx1" tag which indexes the offsets of the data chunks within the file.
By way of the RIFF format, the audio-visual data contained in the "movi" chunk can be encoded or decoded by software called a codec, which is an abbreviation for (en)coder/decoder. Upon creation of the file, the codec translates between raw data and the data format used inside the chunk. An AVI file may carry audio/visual data inside the chunks in virtually any compression scheme, including Full Frame, Intel Real Time, Cinepak, Motion JPEG, Editable MPEG, VDOWave, ClearVideo / RealVideo, QPEG, and MPEG-4 Video.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Video_Interleave
Free AVI Converter Software:
Our free AVI converter software supports converting to AVI and converting from AVI.
| Software Name | Convert from AVI | Convert to AVI |
| Free Video Converter | Support | Support |
| Free Video Cutter | Support | Support |
| Free Video Joiner | Support | Support |
Related Downloads:
Free Video Converter is a free video converter software to convert video files between many formats or extract audio from video files.
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