AVI files were released with Microsoft's "Video for Windows" technology in 1992. This project introduced video and audio playback for Windows operating systems and was a pioneering project for computer technologies.
Today, AVI files are used to play movies on computers. While the format is generally for audio and video output through a decoding software, it is not uncommon for the file to be solely audio or video, or even have no valuable information to play back at all. The AVI extension is simply a container that allows Windows to perceive that the file is an audio-visual file.
AVI files are a format created with the RIFF file concept, short for "Resource Interchange File Format." This breaks the data inside the file into "chunks," which can then be read by a codec, which is an audiovisual decoding software.
Since its original release in 1992, the AVI file format was updated and improved to keep up with modern technology. The Maxtor OpenDML Group developed improvements to the file format in 1996 when the AVI file used a new file extension, officially known as AVI 2.0, which made significant improvements to video quality.
AVI is clearly not the sole file format for audiovisual information. While it is a widely used format, it has certain weaknesses compared to other audiovisual files, such as MPEG and MP4 files. AVI files are characteristically larger in comparison to other formats, because they do not feature an efficient compression method. In addition they tend to use more CPU resources than other video formats when in use.