Codec Central - Video for Windows for CD-ROM



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Video for Windows
(.AVI)

Video for Windows is similar to QuickTime. Its main (perhaps only) advantage is that it is built into Windows 95. However, it is limited in many ways. It runs on Windows only, doesn't handle audio/video synchronization as well as QuickTime, and doesn't support variable-length frames.

Video for Windows is no longer supported by Microsoft, and is being replaced by DirectShow/ActiveMovie (one of the DirectX technologies).

Video for Windows is often referred to as "AVI" after the .AVI extensions specified by its file format. Its codecs are implemented as drivers for ACM (Audio Compression Manager) and VCM (Video Compression Manager), and also may be used by some other architectures, including DirectShow and NetShow.

Media Types Supported

Audio
Video
Text
MIDI

Video for Windows Codecs

Codec (Primary Use)	Pros	Cons	Availability
Cinepak CD-ROM video	Plays on wide range of machines ('486/'040 or better), generally gives acceptable image quality	Doesn't work well under about 30 KBps, compression takes significantly longer, image quality not great	Included in Video for Windows 1.1e
Eidos Escape CD-ROM video (4x)	High video quality, fast compression (Note: This has not been tested by Terran)	High data rates, requires fast computers for playback	Available from Eidos Technologies
Indeo 3.2 CD-ROM video	Superior to Cinepak when compressing "talking heads" video, compression is a bit faster	Not well suited to Web data rates, has color artifacting, higher CPU requirements than Cinepak	Included in Video for Windows 1.1e
Microsoft Run Length Encoding	-	Not as good compression/quality ratio as Cinepak	Included in Video for Windows 1.1e
Microsoft Video 1	-	Low quality	Included in Video for Windows 1.1e
H.261 WWW	standards-based; decent WWW image quality	Often not as good as H.263	Included in Windows 95
Indeo Video Interactive 4, 5 CD-ROM video	Very good image quality, additional interactive features	Only playable on high-end Pentiums; not cross-platform	Available from Intel
ClearVideo WWW	Well suited to the Web, good at data rates between 2 and 30 KBps	Needs at least a mid-range Pentium for optimal playback	Available from Iterated Systems
MJPEG Video editing	At 100% quality, image degradation is minimal	Requires large amounts of CPU power, large image and/or high frame rate movies don't play smoothly without special hardware	Available from Paradigm Matrix

Video for Windows(.AVI)

Video for Windows
(.AVI)