Working with AVI Video

AVI is short for Audio-Video Interleave, the file format for Microsoft's Video for Windows standard. It is an audio-video standard designed by Microsoft and is as close to being a video standard on the PC as you can get because it has been around since the introduction of Windows 3.1. It is a format developed for storing video and audio information, and files in this format have an .avi extension. These files are limited to a playback rate of 30 fps, which is adequate for full screen, full motion video. However, Video for Windows does not require any special playback hardware, making it the lowest common denominator for multimedia applications. AVI is the only video format that you can add to your movie with no extra effort or helper applications on your part.

Captivate imports an AVI file as an animation and converts the video into a Flash SWF file during the import process.

To import an AVI file

1.	Open the Storyboard or Edit view, and select or open the slide to contain the AVI file.
2.	Select Insert > Animation. The Open dialog box appears.
3.	Navigate to the folder containing the AVI file, select the file, and click the Open button. A progress bar appears, showing the progress of the conversion process from AVI to SWF (Figure 8.9). When the conversion process is completed, the "New animation" dialog box opens (Figure 8.10). Figure 8.9. AVI movies imported into Captivate are converted to SWF files. Figure 8.10. AVI videos open in the "New animation" dialog box.
4.	Add any transitions or audio effects, and click OK. The "New animation" dialog box closes, the new movie appears in the slide.