[vox-tech] Video File Format

[Bill Kendrick]

On Sat, May 20, 2006 at 11:44:48PM -0700, Alex Mandel wrote:
> I was always under the impression that .avi was a fairly standard and 
> easy to use format for video, most of what I download from the web is in 
> this format. But I'm finding editing with Avi's in linux to be a pain. 
> What formats do people recommend encoding to if I want to edit in linux. 
> I have tools in windows to convert to just about whatever I want I'm 
> just not sure what a great choice is.

If I recall correctly, "AVI" is really just a 'container' format,
meaning that you can have a whole boatload of AVIs, and they all have
different video encodings.  (Meaning some videos might not play with your
video player, because it lacks the necessary codec.)

As usual, Wikipedia is a useful friend, when in doubt (or just curious):

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVI


<snip>
> In the end I probably want to create downloadable files and author Dvds 
> in cross platform compatibilty.

As Micah said, MPEG2 is probably the best bet.
And BTW, two LUGOD meetings have covered this topic:


* In February 2004, LUGOD's own Doug Barbieri demonstrated using Linux to
  download digital video from a DV camera, edit it, and prepare and burn
  it to DVD

  OpenOffice.org Impress slides:
    http://www.lugod.org/presentations/dv_talk.sxi


* This March (2006), Kyle Rankin (author of the book "Linux Multimedia Hacks")
  discussed DVD authoring with Linux, using user-friendly GUI tools:

  HTML presentation notes:
    http://www.lugod.org/presentations/dvd_authoring.html


Enjoy! :^)

-- 
-bill!
bill at newbreedsoftware.com
http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/