Do .avi files have an NTSC or PAL property?
 

I have a P&S camera which as a menu item for "NTSC or PAL". When I record video with it I get .avi with 30fps frame rate.
For creating those .avi clips, does the NTSC/PAL selection matter, or is that not something relevant to an avi file?

Finally if I output from the laptop via S-video, does any of that matter or is some setting within the computer already providing the appropriate format? (US market computer, US market whatever on the other side, such as an SDTV).

I don't really know -- you'd need to read the manual that came with the camera. I have a Sony compact P&S camera, and it only shoots 30fps MJPEG AVI files @ 640x480. PAL is not an option.

On the other hand, that PAL/NTSC selector you see may only be for the video output, for showing the images. The setting may have no effect on the video shooting. And if that's the case, then NTSC video may show back as PAL-60 on a PAL television -- or maybe not be available at all.

The computer output mostly depends on the laptop itself, and the video card sending out video -- it might be NTSC only, or it might have the option to do both PAL and NTSC. Again, you'd have to refer to the documentation that came with the laptop.

There are just so many options out there.

- tx, I suspect that option refers only to a direct camera-display output, not file format. I don't think AVI knows anything about interlaced vs progressive or 60hz vs 50.

Is there a way to check an avi file to see what compression level/codec it was made with? File|Properties (windows) doesn't tell much.

You bet!

Use GSpot. (Yes, a silly name for otherwise excellent video identifier software. A lonely programmer, no doubt.)

About halfway down this page -- http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/vid...nd-sources.htm -- is a section called How to analyze digital files, and that's all you have to do to discover what the AVI file's specs are.

Note that the guide/article page links to version 2.52, but I think version 2.70 beta is more useful for "modern" MPEG-4 type AVI files. At least in 2009. That one is available at http://www.headbands.com/gspot/v26x/index.htm

Easy, easy! :)