Chapter 14: Understanding the AVI File Format

Part IV

Advanced Topics

Chapter 14

Understanding the AVI File Format

On the Microsoft Windows platform, the most common file format for storage of digital video capture is the venerable AVI format. DV-encoded audio/video files are normally stored in AVI format, and files encoded in any of a number of other compression formats can also be stored in AVI format. Perhaps the most common use of AVI today is for the storage of raw, uncompressed video streams such as those captured by a digital camcorder which will be edited, analyzed, or processed at some later time. The internal structure of an AVI file reveals how many media streams are stored in the file and the media types of these streams. AVI is a generic container format; it s entirely neutral as to what kind of data it contains.

In the context of this book, you re most likely to encounter AVI files when they contain captured audio and video streams from a digital video (DV) device such as a DV camcorder or a webcam. Although Microsoft DirectShow will allow you to process those streams through the use of the AVI Splitter filter, which creates separate audio and video streams from a single, multiplexed stream of data, it s occasionally necessary to delve into the internals of an AVI file. You might also be interested in creating an AVI file from scratch, although normally you d create AVI files by placing the AVI Mux transform filter immediately before the File Writer renderer filter in your filter graph.

This chapter is designed to help you learn how AVI files are constructed. It s meant to complement the AVI RIFF File Reference and DV Data in AVI File Format entries located in the appendixes of the DirectShow documentation in the Microsoft DirectX SDK. Those documents contain basic information about the structure of an AVI file, which this chapter will expand on.



Programming Microsoft DirectShow for Digital Video and Television
Programming Microsoft DirectShow for Digital Video and Television (Pro-Developer)
ISBN: 0735618216
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 108
Authors: Mark D. Pesce

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