AVI is a multimedia container that is very popular among PC and Mac users. The format was developed by Microsoft in 1992. Usually AVI is used as a video format but unlike other formats of that time, AVI may contain both audio and video data compressed with a use of different combinations of codecs. More often such video codecs as DivX and XVID are used with .avi files. For audio playback such codecs as MP3, AC3 and PCM are used. It is possible to play AVI files with Windows Media Player or other similar programs.

Is a standard for storing audio files in Apple operating systems. It was developed in 1988 based on the IFF format and is a lossless format – audio data is stored in an uncompressed form. In essence, AIFF is an analog to WAV for the Apple Macintosh platform.