Compressing Avi

[Tony11]

I've captured video from a digital camcorder to my computer with WinDV. Each 15 minutes file now has 2.6 GB

1. How can I compress that so that I can burn the avi-file onto a CD?
2. If I want to burn a DVD do I have to do that using any of the tools mentioned here (e.g. Avi2DVD) or will the burning software do that automatically?
And if I burn a DVD will the file size stay at 2.6 GB for 15 minutes or is there a way to decrease that?

I admit these are probably stupid questions but I've read so much about converting on this site that I'm now confused. I understand how to do a conversion but not in which cases I actually do need to convert.

I'll appreciate any hint!

[Baldrick]

1. If you want to keep the quality you must split it on several cds. But you could also compress it to avi divx/xvid or wmv with for example AutoGK(AVI Divx) or Windows Movie Maker(WMV).
2. Do you mean a dvd-video that should work on dvd players? Then it depends on the burning software, some can convert,author and burn to dvd-video like avi2dvd, nero vision, tmpgencdvd author, convertxtodvd, dvd flicks or see our tools list under all-in-one dvd converters. The size on the dvd-video disc depends on the video bitrate you use, most all-in-one tools set the bitrate automatically for you, 15 min around 600MB.

[Tony11]

1. If you want to keep the quality you must split it on several cds. But you could also compress it to avi divx/xvid or wmv with for example AutoGK(AVI Divx) or Windows Movie Maker(WMV).
2. Do you mean a dvd-video that should work on dvd players? Then it depends on the burning software, some can convert,author and burn to dvd-video like avi2dvd, nero vision, tmpgencdvd author, convertxtodvd, dvd flicks or see our tools list under all-in-one dvd converters. The size on the dvd-video disc depends on the video bitrate you use, most all-in-one tools set the bitrate automatically for you, 15 min around 600MB.

I tried option #2 with Avi2DVD but when it was finished it said "All Jobs Done", then just above that it sayd "Job NOT Done. There are warnings ... Find at the log file the 0 byte generated file to focus where exactly the problem appears." When I looked in the Avi2dvd_Temp folder there is no video_ts folder and I do not seem to have an ISO file. Now I'm not sure which files exactly I need to burn a DVD but there should be at least one with several hundred MB, I assume, and there were none.

Is it because I only have about 9 GB space on my hard drive?