Can anyone explain the difference between the popular video file formats? Particularly the different MPEG versions, avi, divx, and asf? How do they compare to each other in terms of quality and file size?

-- jason rotunno (j_sun_r@hotmail.com), July 12, 2001

Answers

Mpeg video files can be converted into vcd's, vcd's resolution is 352*240 and the sound is uncompressed, the sound of the movie is about 1,1gb. Divx files are called *.avi with the divx format you can do any resolution and size 1,35:1 1,85:1 2,35:1 for some serious widescreen movies. The sound is either in mp3 or wma format, and the sound of the movie is about 70 mb, which leaves much more space for better picture quality. asf suck, is alot like divx only it hasn't got any keyframes, meaning you can't jump to a spot in the movie, and if your computer decides to screw up while watching the movie to bad you have to watch it all over, but asf movies are only about 300mb each.

-- Jeppe Marcussen (sk8brain@hotmail.com), July 12, 2001.

I have no problem with anything Jeppo said, but just to add a little- you will discover that video quality and time are opposed to each other. You can get more time on a CD-R by sacrificing quality. You can get more video quality by sacrificing recording time. MPEG-2 offers better video quality than MPEG-1, but again, you produce bigger files as a tradeoff for quality. It might take you, say, 3 CD-Rs to burn a movie to SVCD whereas burning it in VCD format might only take 2 CD-Rs, but the SVCD discs should be better quality. MPEG-2 is what DVDs use, but at very high bit rates. DivX offers an excellent combination of video quality with good compression rates, but they are only playable on PCs.

-- Jason (Jason.Shumate@equant.com), July 13, 2001.