Scott,

The Avi format is an older format, I believe it was already used in Windows 3.1, However, Avi can use different codecs, such as Xvid, Divx etc. to compress video data and of course other codecs for audio (such as MP3 or plain uncompressed Wave).
But the users who view these files also need the same codecs installed which you have used to compress your Avi files, else it wont play properly.
Personally I would prefer WMV, it is a much newer format used by Windows Media Player, the codecs are standard in Windows Media Player, so they would play fine on every computer that has the latest version of Windows Media Player installed (which can easily be downloaded at Microsofts site).

Here is the link for Windows Media Encoder, which you can use to convert Mpeg or Avi files to WMV files:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/encoder/default.aspx

Greetz ,
Marcel

[This message has been edited by Wazza (edited 02-12-2004).]

[This message has been edited by Wazza (edited 02-12-2004).]