Fastest/Cheapest way from MiniDV .avi -> Mpeg 1 or 2 (S)V

[pressthe6]

Hi Gurus,

Maybe and old question posted a different way...

Just got a MiniDV camcorder and am ingesting (rendering?) the video using Ulead VideoStudio 6 SE DVD. When I capture the video it suggests I use a NTSC DV AVI (720x480) template because "For fast and efficient rendering, you should choose your template based on your source videos' format".

After capturing I have used TMPGEnc to encode that avi file to MPEG2 and burn that as a SVCD.

Now considering 1) I only have a 30 day trial with the MPEG2 feature in TMPGEnc and 2) It took about 4 hours to encode 38 minutes worth of video, what do you think is the cheapest and fastest method of habitually encoding avi files to mpeg2 (or mpeg1 if I must).

Any other tips/thoughts always appreciated.

[Two2Tango]

Well if you are looking for cheap, try avi2vcd (mpeg) program its free.