Help! I need a good (free or thereabouts) video converter! (in Off-topic)

I have a Quicktime file of about 1GB that I need to knock down to around 100MB without it looking crappy, and convert over to a WMV file. Anyone know of such a program?

You can compress video using any number of possible codecs out there. The easiest is an mpeg standard (mpeg 1 for VCD resolution, or mpeg 2 for DVD resolution). You can use xvid as well, though that tends to be good for certain types of video information.

From your post, though, it seems that you've settled on WMV as your format of choice. WMV is a very broad video format, and though I don't think it's the best choice, it's far from the worst. It depends on your final application, I suppose. What do you want the video for, and again, what type of video is it? Cartoon, live action, heavy motion, etc?

There are numerous programs out there that will compress video using any codec installed on your system. The real trick is making sure that you actually have the right codecs available. You could probably start with blazemp.com. It's a fairly decent piece of software that has a relatively intuitive interface that will get the job done and can be tuned somewhat easily.

For starters:

MiniMem (Trillion) 72.189.74.85 NightStrike (The Iconics 3e) $20 -- $20 Word Award 1:20 AM EDT

Anyhow, what I'm trying to compress is a documentary I did on the Orlando area Guardian Angels that was shot completely handheld. What I need is a good intraframe form of compression because the source material was already compressed far too much so that some blurring does occur with quick pans/tilts. I don't really care all that much what format it's in, although in order to get the darn thing on my Zune I have to have it in WMV. I'll check out that site and see what I can do. Any other suggestions would be much appreciated!

Don't you have a program from Adobe which does this?

I'm sure Adobe Premiere could, but I don't own a copy.

Premiere indeed is able to do it.

Too bad the package costs a heck of a lot of money...

I would try DiVx if you haven't already.

there are a few sites to check articles/guides on converting with which types of codecs. svcd/divx/xvid/etc.. www.doom9.net and www.divx-digest.com

mplayer/mencoder

Super (C) should do the trick for you I think. The website is awful so try and ignore it. Download links are near the bottom of the page:

http://www.erightsoft.com/S6Kg1.html