[olug] Video conversion questions...

[Dan Linder]

I have a number of uncompressed digital video files of my daughters that I
pulled off of my "Digital-8" camera via Firewire years ago.

Right now these .AVI files are huge (total about 140GB), and I'd like to
encode them into something a bit smaller without loosing too much quality.

Questions:
1: What is the current suggested version to convert videos to that
will primarily be viewed from a DVD on a computer (Linux/Windows/OSX)?  Two
years ago I though about doing DivX, but now MP4 looks like it may be the
better solution.  Is there an official "HTML5" compatible container?

2: What command-line tools have others used on Linux to convert similar
videos?  I tried "mencoder" yesterday, but it just seemed to hang using 100%
CPU and only wrote a 2K output file (even when I pointed it at a short 10
second clip).  Is "avidemux" a good option, or is there something better?

Thanks,

Dan

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