Open AVI File

AVI file extension is used by Audio Video Interleave files. These files contain multimedia streams stored in AVI container format that was originally developed by Microsoft Corporation in the 1992 based on "Resource Interchange File Format" (RIFF). This format allows to store both audio and video data in the same file for simultaneous playback while using different compression codecs for each stream. This is achieved by interleaving small blocks (called chunks) of audio and video data in the file. AVI files can use many different video compression algorithms including: Intel Real Time (Indeo), Cinepak, Motion JPEG, Editable MPEG, VDOWave, ClearVideo, RealVideo, QPEG, MPEG-4 etc. Each codec is identified by a four-letter code (FOURCC)

DV AVI files are usually produced by miniDV tape camcorders. These files may use inter-frame but not inter-frame compression schemes which produces huge files (usually gigabytes or tens of gigabytes in size) with very good image quality. Normally these files are only used for editing the video and data is then compressed using MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 algorithms to be written on CDs or DVDs.

Almost any modern Windows video player can open AVI files and play information in them.