Maximum PC

I have a Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camera (Details/specs are found here - http://store.kodak.com/store/ekconsus/en_US/pd/Zi8_Pocket_Video_Camera/baseProductID.156585800/productID.156585900 ) and am asking for advice from the video converting junkies out here. I'll try to keep this short.

I have several family videos I've recorded on my laptop over the past year that I'd like to store long term. I'm looking to burn them eventually to DVD but in their current size, they are about a minute of video = 1GB of data (3 minutes of video for a DVD? Tooooo big)

The Zi8 stores in H.264 (.MOV) but I've seen where high def .wmv files are FAR smaller. I did read the latest MPC magazine regarding converting, but it left me needing more info. I am looking for guidance for archiving my videos in a futureproof, yet compact size for storing/playing on dvd. Should I use windows media encoder (or whatever the new one is named or keep it in the above file format? I mean, I can watch 2 hours of movies on a DVD, why is it that I can only watch 2-3 minutes of home videos.

Thanks for reading and I do appreciate your thoughts...

I looked into the link you provided and it offered some file sizing suggestions. Not familiar with the software being used, I do not have any suggestions beyond what you may have already tried.

However, I have an idea to experiment with.

First and foremost, make sure you make a backup copy of a file you are willing to experiment with.

Secondly, check to see if you have Windows Movie Maker packaged with your Windows OS.

If you do, this is where the ‘experimenting’ part comes in. Since you have a .mov file you may need to convert it to something WMM can handle. If your version of WMM won’t accept .mov files, download and install a free utility called Format Factory. I recommend converting it to .avi for overall compatibility.

The conversion process can take anywhere from several minutes to several hours depending on file size… be prepared to be occupied doing something else during this process.

Once the conversion is completed, you can then filter it through WMM (I recommend NTSC 2.1 MBPS). This, too, will take… time.

Once finished, you *should* have a .wmv file that is only a fraction the size of the original. If this *experiment* has worked as well I have done in the past, you will be able to burn DVD’s with little or no loss of quality and much smaller file sizes.

I really do appreciate the help. I'm going to take your advice and will play around with the files a bit with WMM. Also--thanks for the advice for the Format Factory app, I'm definitely going to check it out. My system is a Windows 7 64Bit, (core I7 with 8GB RAM) so hopefully it won't take too long, but I have the time...

Finally, I've done some looking around and I'm going to go ahead and splurge on a Blue Ray DVD burner so I can backup all of the original videos/photos to a couple of DVDs and keep them in the safe.

Thanks again!

I look forward to reading your post on the finished product!