What's the best STANDARD video format (avoiding crashes)

[timmus]

I am burning a hodgepodge of short .avi/.mpg/.mov files to DVD (vob) format. I find that WinAVI handles all this nicely, but a few source files (which I still have yet to identify) cause WinAVI to crash and terminate during .vob encoding.

So, I'm thinking I should transcode each file individually to a single common standard that will minimize the chances of a crash. That way WinAVI doesn't have to work on a difficult conversion and make itself vulnerable to a crash. What would be a good "interim" format? And what would be a recommended tool to make the transcode?

I thought about using WinAVI to make AVI/MPEGs... I tried doing this in WinAVI but it immediately complained about not having Xvid/Divx. I already have the K-Lite Codec pack... I'm not sure why I need something extra like DivX if I just want to make a simple AVI/MPEG.

Tim

[timmus]

OK, not sure if it matters but I just found that the faulty source file that triggers the WinAVI error is a WMV file obtained via Net Transport off an mms server. It plays fine in Windows Media Player... go figure.