Posted by Colin Wilson on 02/04/07 17:07

> I've tried WMV, which did create a smaller file size, but I thought AVI was
> the standard? If WMV makes smaller files and no codec issues then why
> doesn't everybody simply use WMV?

WMV is a Microsoft file format. You don't want to tie yourself to any
Microsoft file format :-)

> Is AVI really MPEG-4?
> I've seen that I can save a file as MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 and I didn't know if
> these would be better formats, ie compatibility and file size wise.
> Any pointers you can give to fill the huge gaps in my knowledge would be
> really appreciated.

http://www.doom9.org might be a good place to start reading up - there
are many formats, several of which use the .avi file extension, and just
to make life hard, divx and xvid are not necessarily cross-compatible -
not only with each other, but also depending on which version of the
codec was used to create the file :-}

MPEG 1 or 2 are probably the most easily convertible to any other media
format, so might be worth sticking with them - however i'm not an expert
in the field, and one might be along shortly :-}

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