Encoding AVI to MPEG files
Just a little note about TMPEGEnc 2.5x which is a fantastic, no non-sense video encoding program that just works. It can encode your (DV-)AVI files into MPEG. Options include PAL/NTSC, VideoCD/SVCD/DVD with or wihout Variable bitrate and all that stuff. The point here is that you can actually configure it down to the tiny details, but you don’t have to since it just works out of the box. The visual quality of the results is great, too, although a friend on mine argues that Cinemacraft files look better.
The free test-version gives you unlimited time to encode MPEG1 (VideoCD), but to use the MPEG2 (SVCD/DVD) capabilities for longer than a month you have to register the program for about 37$. Fair enough.