hello,
previous question was: is it possible to do this conversion? with a codec that is native to win 2000.

a thank you
to bj_m for an elaborate and detailed response.

one fella did have a suggestion to use the stoik video converter. thank you.
now this little gadget works just fine, cept for one thing, the video data rate does not stay true to the orig. this is bad.

the small avi clips average eight to twelve seconds in length. these are a series of stills that have been copied and edited by hand. the final product moves slightly during the play there by providing some motion.

when the video rate goes from 225kbps up to 5400kbps, all the motion happens in the first .3 seconds.

have also tried using virtualdub 1.4 and setting the video compression. target data rate to one that is close to the orig. this is a very manually intensive process. there are approx 30 files in one package. and close to seventy packages in all. batch processing would be nice.

any other suggestions?
thanks in advance