AVI means Audio Video Interleave, 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 theDVD video format, AVI files support multiple streaming audio and video, although these features are seldom used.

The AVI file type is primarily associated with 'Audio Video Interleave File'. Recent files might be compressed with one or another codecs (like DivX and XviD). It can also be seen with VLC Player, MPlayer, The KMPlayer.

Uncompressed AVI: AVI files can be created with no Compression, resulting in extremely large file sizes, but with no loss of quality from the input video to the saved file. This also requires no codecs to be installed, either for saving or playback. This is generally not recommended.

Let's take a look AVI Advantage:

1. Choice of codecs means you can achieve a high rate compression if you experiment.
   
2. AVI can play in mainstream media players such as Windows Media Player.
   
3. AVI Can be used as a starting point to create playable DVDs.

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And Disadvantage:

1.  AVI does not provide a standardized way to encode aspect ratio information, with the result that players cannot select the right one automatically (though it may be possible to do so manually).

1. Cannot contain some specific types of VBR data(such as MP3 audio at sample rates below 32KHz) reliably.
   
2. Overhead for AVI files at the resolutions and frame rates normally used to encode feature films is about 5 MB per hour of video, the significance of which varies with the application.
   
3. AVI was not intended to contain video using any compression technique which requires access to future video frame data beyond the current frame. Approaches exist to support modern video compression techniques (e.g. MPEG-4) which rely on this functionality, although this is beyond the intent of the original specification and may cause problems with playback software which does not anticipate this use.

1. AVI is not intended to contain variable frame rate material. Workarounds for this limitation increase overhead dramatically.

1. There are several competing approaches to including time-code in AVI files, which affects usability of the format in film and television postproduction (although it is widely used). An equivalent of the Broadcast Wave extensions, designed to standardize postproduction metadata for wave audio files, has not emerged.

The Future of AVI Video

More recent container formats, such as Matroska (MKV), Ogg and MP4, solve all these problems, although software is freely available to both create and correctly replay AVI files which use these new techniques.

Released Free to Try Software

Sog DVD to iPhone/iPod/Apple-TV Ripper : is an all-in-one solution for converting or rippint DVD to iPod iPhone and Apple-TV video format, or extracting DVD audio to mp3 music files so that you can play it on your iPod iPhone and Apple-TV.

Sog Video Converter : built-in more than 210 video/audio codecs, it is perfect for MKV Video Converting, multi-functions as HD Video Converter, DVD Burner and Website Video Downloader. Without any third-party codec, it support Multi-track HD M2TS, MKV, AVCHD and MPEG-TS video.

Sog DVD Ripper : all-in-one software for ripping DVD on Windows . It is designed to make perfect 1:1 DVD copy to hard drive and rip your DVD movies to AVI, MOV, MP4, FLV, and support outputing other video formats..

Sog Video Converter Platinum : is an all-in-one solution for converting all most video formats file to avi DivX Xvid MPEG1/2 MPEG-4 wmv flv (flash video) , video to iPod / iPhone / AppleTV , video to PSP, video to mobile phone (3GP), or extracting audio to mp3 music files so that you can play it on PC, iPod, iPhone, Apple-TV, MP4-Player, PSP, Mobile Phone, Zune, PDA.Fast and easy to use.