NormsForum.com

[JimG]

I recently upgraded my Ilo hard drive and, as part of that process, I now have on my computer hard drive the "CONTENT01," and "CONTENT02" files that used to be on the ILO. I have renamed them with an .mpg extension and a prefix that describes what they are (e.g., HomeVideo1.mpg).

I would now like to convert these to an AVI format (DIVX or XVID) that would save some hard drive space (and where I could play these on the TV via XBMC on my old hacked XBOX. I can already play them but I'd like to "shrink" them so they don't take up so much hard drive space.

I know virtualdub-mpeg2 will do this (if you download and install the Divx/XVID codecs), but I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for other programs that might do it easier or better or faster (preferably freeware).

Thanks. (If I posted this in the wrong forum, feel free to move it).

[Normando]

I haven't been in the video conversion scene for over a year. A year is like an eternity considering how quickly things change in this digital age.

I was using Dr DivX without any problems. Very easy to save your settings and reuse them. No it is not free.

Back when I was researching the stuff, there were plenty of other freeware programs. I believe one was called Gordian Knot... another called FairUse. Obviously, they were not nearly as easy to use as the Dr.

Your best bet is to head over to http://videohelp.com and read/search through the forum posts.

Make sure you search their posts prior to asking questions. Folks over there get a bit cranky when every newbie that joins their forum asks the same questions over and over again.

Best of luck and please share your findings with us.

Norm

[JimG]

Check it out at http://labs.divx.com/DrDivX - the version 1 was not free; versions 2.0+ apparently are.

Get the most recent build which includes support for DVR-MS files (which is the format that you get when you record using a TV feed into Windows Media Center.