AVI

AVI, short for Audio Video Interleave, is a multimedia container format introduced by Microsoft in 1992 as part of the Video for Windows technology. It stores audio and video data as synchronized streams that are interleaved to enable simultaneous playback. The format is defined as a RIFF-based container, and files commonly use the .avi extension.

Because AVI is a container, it can incorporate a variety of codecs for audio and video, including uncompressed PCM, MP3, MPEG-4 Part 2, DivX, and Xvid. This flexibility contributed to wide adoption in early PC multimedia but also led to compatibility variability across players and platforms, depending on the exact codec used.

Limitations and evolution: AVI lacks standardized metadata and streaming features found in later containers, and older implementations are subject to a 2 GB file size limit when using 32-bit offsets. As a result, AVI has been largely supplanted by more modern formats such as MP4, MKV, and WebM for new productions, though the format remains in use for archival material and legacy content.

Name and other uses: In Hebrew, Avi is a masculine given name derived from Av, meaning “father” or “my father”; it is commonly used in Israel and Jewish communities, sometimes as a nickname for names such as Avraham or Avner. The letters AVI can also be an acronym for other phrases, but in common usage the container format and the name are the primary associations.