You've presented two conflicting requirements. An image backup, by definition, is a copy of the physical medium (sector by sector, no filesystem references used). File selection is a filesystem function, and would be a file based backup. You can do either, or both, but one function can't provide the solution because of the conflict.
To do an image backup, you can for example:
Code:
dd if=/dev/hda1 bs=1M | bzip2 -z > backup.compressed
See 'man dd' and 'man bzip2' for options.
To perform a file by file backup, but exclude .avi files:
Code:
tar -v --one-file-system --create --bzip --exclude=*.avi --file backup.tar.bz2 /
See 'man tar' for options.
