WMV files are a type of video file (usually containing audio) from Microsoft. These files can be played on a variety of video players on both Mac and PC machines. Some WMV files may have digital rights management (DRM) protection which prevents users from making unauthorized copies of files purchased in online stores.
Windows Media Video (WMV) is a compressed video file format for several proprietary codecs developed by Microsoft. These files are based on the Microsoft Advanced Systems Format (ASF) container format encoded using the Windows Media Video (WMV) codec.
Associated programs
MPlayer Microsoft Windows Media Player PowerDVD RealPlayer VideoLAN VLC Media Player
Using Zamzar it is possible to convert WMV files to a variety of other formats:
wmv to 3gp (3GPP Multimedia File) wmv to 3g2 (3GPP2 Multimedia File) wmv to aac (Advanced Audio Coding File) wmv to ac3 (AC3 Audio File) wmv to avi (Windows video file) wmv to flac (Free Lossless Audio Codec) wmv to flv (Flash video) wmv to gif (Compuserve graphics interchange) wmv to ipad (MPEG-4 (H264) Video File) wmv to iphone (MPEG-4 (H264) Video File) wmv to ipod (MPEG-4 Video File) wmv to mov (Apple QuickTime Movie) wmv to mp3 (Compressed audio file) wmv to mp4 (MPEG-4 Video File) wmv to mpg (Moving Picture Experts Group File) wmv to ogg (Ogg Vorbis Compressed Audio File) wmv to wav (Windows audio file) wmv to webm (Multimedia Container Format)
AVI stands for Audio Video Interleave. Files of this format have an .avi extension. Developed by Microsoft in 1992, it has become so widespread that many people consider it the de-facto standard for storing video and audio information on PC. AVI combines audio and video into a single file in a standard container to allow simultaneous playback. Its advatage is a simple architecture, due to which AVI runs on a number of different systems like Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix and is supported by all of the most popular web-browsers.'
AVI is a derivative of the Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF), which divides a file's data into blocks, or chunks. Each chunk is identified by a FourCC tag. An AVI file takes the form of a single chunk in a RIFF formatted file, which is then subdivided into two mandatory chunks and one optional chunk. The first sub-chunk is identified by the hdrl tag. This sub-chunk is the file header and contains metadata about the video, such as its width, height and frame rate. The second sub-chunk is identified by the movi tag. This chunk contains the actual audio/visual data that make up the AVI movie. The third optional sub-chunk is identified by the idx1 tag which indexes the offsets of the data chunks within the file.
Associated programs
ALLPlayer Apple QuickTime Player Microsoft Windows Media Player VideoLAN VLC Media Player
