I have this .avi video that I created by stitching together music and still videos. I wanted to put it into a DVD format so that friends and relatives could play it on their TV without any computer knowledge. The .avi video is almost 20 minutes in length, clocking in at over 700 MB, so I couldn't upload it to a high-res video site like Vimeo which restricts video file sizes to 500MB if you don't have their premium package.
There are a whole pile of free AVI to DVD software packages. I picked the first one from Google, and it turned out to be www.avitodvdfree.com and the program is called AviToDVDfree. It was easy to use and intuitive, and the bonus feature was that it not only converted but burned it to disc at the same time. I was amazed at how fast it took. However, there was a gotchya. I took the DVD to the television set. There was an older DVD player there. About 4 minutes into the DVD, it got stuck and wouldn't advance. I was able to hit fast forward, and after skipping about ten seconds, it played again. However, the same thing happened at the thirteen minute mark. It got gonged and I went looking for another package.
I downloaded freevideostodvd by KoyoteSoft. I fed in the avi, and the thing blew it. It threw an exception saying that there wasn't enough room on the disc to burn the DVD. Since I had previously burned a DVD with the same file, I knew that this was BS. I tried again, and this time it just mysteriously quit with no message. I gonged it and moved on.
The third package that I downloaded was AVI2DVD by Trust FM @ http://www.avitodvd.ws/freeware/
I was a little disconcerted because it wanted to download all of these filters and codecs. I checked them out and one of them was from sourceforge, so I knew that it was legit. The program is massively localized, meaning that it operates in a whole variety of languages. Plus it invokes .bat files so windows open and close. It took a fair bit of time to process and it didn't burn the .iso file to my DVD drive. However, I opened the temp folder, right clicked on the iso file and it invoked the disc burning utility that came with my laptop, and Bob's your Uncle. It worked perfectly. It is the one that I recommend for quality, convenience and just plain works every time.
Hope this helps.
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