If you work with video files, you've likely come across files with the AVI extension. And while you know your way around a computer, you may only have a vague notion of what an AVI file is and what it stands for.
However, you do know that you have a bunch of AVI files sitting on your laptop taking up space, and at some point, you're going to have to do something about that.
But before you start deleting files en masse, check out this quick refresher on AVI files, which may save you from making a costly mistake.
AVI, which stands for Audio Video Interleave, is a fairly common file format for data that contains both audio and video. Developed by Microsoft in 1992, AVI is a proprietary file format known as a container. Other containers you may have seen include OGG, mvk, MPG, and MOV, among others.
AVI codecs don't typically compress audio and video data as much as some other video formats. And some videographers prefer to capture and store footage without compressing the data at all. Doing so allows video editors to play the footage without quality loss and make more complex edits.
To complete complex editing projects, such as a film or television editing, usually requires a team. And even if all the team members are working in the same building, they need to share files. An uncompressed AVI file can take up as much as 3 GB per minute of footage, making sharing AVI files via email or through a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server a challenge. To do so, you'll need to compress the files first using a file compress tool.
Sharing video footage for editing purposes is far from the only reason you may need to compress AVI files. AVI files can be huge and require massive amounts of storage space. However, compressing them reduces the amount of storage space you'll ultimately need for your file (and back-up copies) on your computer, server, or cloud-based storage solution. Compressed data can also be sent more quickly over the Internet. If you've got a deadline to hit, you don't want your team member across the country or the world to be stuck waiting to receive your files. Compressed data can also load quicker on your computer.
When you compress AVI files, you're typically either using a lossy or lossless compress method. Lossy compress permanently eliminates some data to reduce file sizes — data that the average person would not miss. If, for example, you shot a video of a stream in a park, lossy compress might eliminate some sounds inaudible to humans that your mic picked up, among other data. However, over time, repeated encoding and decoding of these files will lead to visible and audible degradation in their quality.
From File Explorer:
From within WinZip:
Note: Certain file types do not compress as much as others. You must have WinZip installed on your computer to use these methods.
Lossless compress techniques, by contrast, keep all data intact during the compress process. And while lossy compress may be good enough for one-off video needs, anyone who needs their AVI files to retain the same quality over time requires software that uses lossless compress techniques. You'll need easy-to-use and time-tested software like WinZip that helps you easily compress your AVI and other large file formats so that you can get them where they need to go.
