AVI or MPEG?

Hey everyone, I've been looking at a lot of digital cameras and
camcorders lately, and I noticed that some record video in AVI format,
and some in MPEG format. And I was wondering what is the difference
between these two formats?

Alex

 

[Howard Henry Schlunder]

You can't directly compare the two without more information. The Audio
Video Interleaved (AVI) standard defines a file structure which can contain
encoded video and encoded audio (among other features). In other words, you
can store MPEG streams in a AVI file (witness DivX, an MPEG4 variant stored
in AVI files). Similarly, AVI files can contain MPEG1 Layer 3 audio, or
Windows Media Audio, or raw Pulse Code Modulation, or whatever. I don't
know if MPEG files can contain non-MPEG streams, but I don't recall ever
knowingly comming across such a file.

If you ask me without giving more information, I would choose AVI. Since
information on the structure is freely available on the Internet, you can
readily get software to record and edit it (like VirtualDub). With more
information, I would certainly choose the one which visually appeared to be
the highest quality.

Howard Henry Schlunder

<amshuck@att.net> wrote in message
news:ca13190c.0309021257.6acc0587@posting.google.com...

Hey everyone, I've been looking at a lot of digital cameras and
camcorders lately, and I noticed that some record video in AVI format,
and some in MPEG format. And I was wondering what is the difference
between these two formats?

Alex