Opening AVI Files

The AVI file type is primarily associated with Movies & TV.

AVI	File extension: AVI
	File type:	video

What is an AVI file

AVI files mostly belong to Movies & TV by Microsoft. AVI (Audio Video Interleave) is a video file format developed by Microsoft. Files with AVI extension are typically used to save movies containing multiple audio and video streams which can be played locally with programs such as Media Player, Movies & TV, QuickTime or VLC. An AVI file contains data such as the file's Header, compressed/uncompressed video frames, audio data, and palette change. When streamed across a network, AVI files use MIME types such as video/avi, video/msvideo, video/vnd.avi, or video/x-ms-video. Codecs such as XVID, Indeo, Cinepak, Uncompressed RGB, DivX and YUY2 are used to encode/decode multimedia data in AVI files. AVI is also widely used to store audio-visual data in some DVD discs. AviSys, a legacy software used by bird watchers also uses AVI files to store its bird watchers database.

How to open an AVI file

You need a suitable software like Movies & TV to open an AVI file. Without proper software you will receive a Windows message "How do you want to open this file?" or "Windows cannot open this file" or a similar Mac/iPhone/Android alert. If you cannot open your AVI file correctly, try to right-click or long-press the file. Then click "Open with" and choose an application. You can also display a AVI file directly in the browser:. Just drag the file onto this browser window and drop it.

Online AVI File Viewer

Choose your .avi file to play

or drag and drop it here

Online File Viewer

✈

Read our privacy guarantee in Filext’s terms and privacy policy

Please allow ads on our site

This helps us keep our servers running. Then re-upload your file to view it.

Click here to see how to disable the ad blocker for filext.com

How to convert an AVI file to MP4, MP3, MKV, AVI, ...

1. To do this, click the button "Choose your .avi file to play" on this page.
2. Your AVI file will then be displayed in the browser.
3. Now click on "Save as..." at the top of the page.
4. Then click the video format (e.g. MP4, MKV, AVI, ...) you want.
5. Your file will be converted and downloaded.

AVI file format:

A file format defines how the data in the file is structured. The initial characters of a file are called signature, sometimes also referred to as "magic bytes". The signature can be used to infer the file format. If the file extension or signature does not match the file format, errors will occur when opening or editing the file. Exact knowledge of the format is therefore important in order to solve problems occurring in files. Our examination of the AVI files comes to the following conclusion:

AVI is a very widely used file extension. The file type primarily uses a special format that can be read by various programs. However, the following two file formats are common:

• 75% of all AVI files are AVI Audio Video Interleaved data files, which are using the popular RIFF file format. RIFF files store data in tagged chunks. There are primarily used to store multimedia such as sound and video. They consist of illegible, cryptic characters. AVI files can be up to 56 GB in size, but are often around 710 KB - 580 MB. The file type was created 20 years ago but is still used today. The files contain the following words: hdrlavih8, strf(, strlstrh8, RIFF, AVI LIST and LISTt. Such AVI files store data about movi, xvid, video, dvdrip, record, clip, level, dscf and movies.
• 1% of all AVI files are based on the well-known MKV file format. MKV is short for Matroska Multimedia Container. It can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture, or subtitle tracks in one file. It is a universal format for storing common multimedia content, like movies or TV shows. Matroska is similar to AVI, MP4, or ASF, but is entirely open in specification and consisting of open source software. If you open these files in a text editor, you will see only illegible characters. The file size is in the range of 1 MB to 1 GB. The files contain the following words: matroskaB. These files are attributed to downloaded movies.

All other AVI files (24%) have no uniform format, such as JPG and OTRKEYFILE. Sometimes used for hdrip, screen, woman, mova, bandicam or pict. If you want to find out which format your AVI file belongs to, just click on the button "Choose your .avi file to play".