AVI Files

Audio/visual interleaved (AVI) files are one of the more popular animated image formats in use today. They are most often used for video playback, though they are also used for more simple things such as the Windows "file copy" and "search" animations. AVI image data can be stored uncompressed, but it is typically compressed using a Windows-supplied or third party compression and decompression module called a codec. To play an AVI file compressed with a specific codec, that codec must be available on the target system. AVI files can optionally contain audio data and, unlike flic files, are not limited to 256 colors (although 256-color AVI files are almost always larger than equivalent flic files).

Fastgraph's AVI functions work with either 256-color or direct color virtual buffers, but you cannot play a high color or true color AVI in a 256-color virtual buffer. The AVI functions are virtually identical to their flic file counterparts, so it's rather easy to switch from flic files to AVI files in a Fastgraph program. Fastgraph also includes functions for creating AVI files and obtaining palette information from an AVI file (which have no equivalent flic functions in Fastgraph).