Anilrgowda

It doesnt look like DivX has an encoder yet for Vista. Anyone have an idea when this will be out? I have several things I need to encode on my Vista box...it can play them but cant encode them.

Anilrgowda

If you want to futureproof your valuable movies I'd be looking at where the world broadcast and storage standards are going. And they're not going DivX. DVDs use MPEG-2, but that may be a little too big for your hard drive. But you definately don't want to go below DVD resolution, which is 720 x 480 (NTSC) or 720 x 576 (PAL) if you ever want to make DVDs or even stream your videos to a TV monitor.
It doesn't matter what codec you use, if you reduce the pixel resolution it just won't look as good as it did at full resolution -- once resolution is lost you can never get it back unless you keep the original.
The other problem with DivX is that it might be ok on your PC, but as hard as they've tried most major DVD manufacturers just simply will not put the codec in their DVD players -- so unless you've got a DVD player that specifically has the DivX codec, it won't play. Same thing with streaming from a website.
So back to your question. MPEGs latest codec is MPEG-4 (AVC), which is also (and more widely) known as H.264. This is undisputedly the finest video codec in the world today -- used in European broadcasts of High Definition television and specified in ALL the new Blu-ray and HD DVD High Definition DVD players. It uses about half the storage space that MPEG-2 does and actually performs better. So most movies at full DVD standard resolution encoded with H.264 will take up just over 2GB.
And this is where the futureproofing comes in. Later on when we all buy Blu-Ray disc players (and we will) -- and PC DVD Blu-Ray burners will become as cheap as chips (and they will), you can drop your H.264 Movies onto a Blu-Ray Disc for viewing on your plasma or LCD. You'll be able to fit aroung 20 of your Standard Definition (same as today's DVD) movies on a Blu-Ray disc.
Where do you get an H.264 encoder? Quicktime Pro, $29.99.

This solution will play on your PC today (in Quicktime), you can stream if you want (by making smaller resolution files) -- and you can view on your TV monitor (with Blu-Ray or HD DVD) -- or you can simply make a standard DVD (in MPEG-2 VOBs) WITHOUT LOSS OF RESOLUTION.