Good Video Converter
 

I have been using WinAVI Video Converter for a long time, and it has suited my needs up until now. I converted a 3GB AVI file to DVD format, and it reduced the size to 374MB. Quality was noticeably lost, and after searching through WinAVI options and settings, I could not find where it has a compression ratio setting or anything of that nature. Any suggestions?

Maybe you inadvertently told it to convert to VCD instead of DVD? I don't see why it would have to be 374MB though.

Haven't used WinAVI though. I used the (more complicated) TMPGEnc software to do the task.

Nowadays I don't even convert - modern DVD players support DivX/XviD formats, so all you do is burn the file into the DVD as an AVI file. There are some players which come with a USB port, meaning you can use a flash drive instead, and skip on the burning part.

For the best program to do all sorts of video conversion I use AviDemux. It's a great program for converting FLV, DVDs and many more formats. It comes with all the codecs built in so you don't have to download them. You can get it at Avidemux.org.

I would probably use Xvid as the video codec and AC3 for the audio codec.

Hope that helps.

I've used Mediacoder a bit with success. It's amazingly compatible (can basically convert anything to anything), but "videophilles" say it doesn't give quality like the more advanced programs like TMPEG.

i used it without problem or noticable quality loss. it's free. i recommend h.264

I use Tmpgenc 4.0 Xpress.