
The camera uses a codec to compress the footage - a DV tape camera for example uses the DV codec. When this footage is captured to the computer using the DV codec the computer (by default) writes the file into an *.avi format and file suffix. *.avi is not a type of compression but simply a 'wrapper' to go aroud the file that could be encoded in any number of codecs (for example you could have Mpeg4 codec *.avi files). If you connect the same DV camera to a macintosh computer it will still be the identical DV codec but it would be written into a *.mov wrapper not an *.avi wrapper. Internally they are identical, but the file format on the outside is different and has a different suffix.
source

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests