digital video - audio video interleave (DV-AVI)

DV- AVI, DigitalVideo - Audio Video Interleave, is a file format created by digital video camcorders. For example, by MiniDV, Digital-8, DVCAM or DVCPro. Like the AVI format, it is a container format with one or more video and audio streams.

DV-AVI is compressed and, in contrast to uncompressed AVI, has a much smaller data volume and memory requirement. This is due to the fact that AVI files are uncompressed and stored in raw format. One hour of DV-AVI requires about 15 GB of storage space.

DV-AVI distinguishes between Type 1, which has one video stream in which video and audio are multiplexed, and DV-AVI Type 2 with two video and audio streams. Video has been compressed by appropriate video codecs and audio has been encoded in pulse code modulation. DV-AVI Type 1 is not compatible with Video for Windows (VfW), whereas DV-AVI Type 2 is backward compatible with Video for Windows.