Sigh, loving my new HTPC and Windows 7 WMC recording HD shows. I pretty much know how to make and author DVDs working with .mpg, but this whole realm of HD AVIs confounds me.

I have a couple of Nova specials that I'd like to save in a smaller, but still HQ/HD format. The WTV files are pretty much 4-6GB per hour, but if I could recompress them to about 1/2 the size, that'd be great; easier to store and cart around. So far I tried TMPGEnc XPress which can edit it, but for some reason couldn't get Xvid to work, came up with an error at the start of encoding. Handbrake looks decent in testing, but can't edit the file.

I'm not a scriptkiddy, and I'd like to keep the process as simple as possible. I got up to Vegas 7 for DVD making, but have no idea about the AVI creating world. Any suggestions?