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Audio Video Interleave

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Also known as .avi, AVI, Audio Video Interleaved, Microsoft AVI format

file format

Key facts

Filename extension
.avi
Internet media type
video/vnd.avi , video/avi, video/msvideo, video/x-msvideo
Type code
'Vfw '
Uniform type identifier uti
public.avi
Developed by
Microsoft
Initial release
November 10, 1992 ; 33 years ago ( 1992-11-10 )
Type of format
Container format
Container for
Audio, video
Extended from
Resource Interchange File Format
Open format
No
Free format
Yes
Website
docs .microsoft .com /windows /win32 /directshow /avi-file-format

via Wikipedia infobox

~7 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Audio Video Interleave (also Audio Video Interleaved and known by its initials and filename extension AVI, usually pronounced /ˌeɪ.viːˈaɪ/) is a proprietary multimedia container format and Windows standard introduced by Microsoft in November 1992 as part of its Video for Windows software. AVI files can contain both audio and video data in an uncompressed 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. A codec popularly used for AVI is MPEG-4 ASP, usually encoded by DivX or Xvid, although many other codecs can also be contained in an AVI file.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Audio Video Interleave” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.