What is the difference between AVI and MPEG file formats? Why should I use MPEG?

AVI format is uncompressed, which means that AVI video requires more hard disk space. For example, one hour of AVI video data in 352x288 resolution will occupy up to 33GB (3300 MB) hard disk space. Uncompressed video has the highest quality, and DV camcorders use DV-AVI as their storage format.

In comparison, the MPEG file format compresses the video, and takes up less space on the hard drive. The similar one hour of video content in 352x288 resolution will take up only 650 MB space when encoded in MPEG file format. The tradeoff is some loss on quality, although using MPEG-2, you can obtain a very clear visual picture.

We recommend using MPEG as this will reduce the required space on your hard drive. A smaller file on the hard drive will also increase performance when editing video. PowerDirector can capture from DV camcorders directly to the MPEG format, so that you no longer need to transfer a huge DV-AVI file from your DV camcorder to your hard drive.