Converting .avi to DVD format

Does anyone know of a free program I can use to convert .avi files to DVD format?

nero?

mencoder

There are no free MPEG-2 converters I know of (that aren't demos crippled in some way, at least). The MPEG-2 standard has licensing fees, so nobody is going to give that stuff away free (unless bundled with a consumer boxed DVD writer drive, for example).

For Linux: mencoder with proper options is the answer

For Windows: you could use VirtualDubMod/VirtualDub to transcode the avi to a mpeg-2 compatible output, then burn that MPEG-2 to the DVD :)

As far as I'm aware VirtualDub, even the MPEG-2 modded version, can't actually make MPEG-2 files (VirtualDub MPEG-2 can only import them for conversion to AVI). And even then you'd need to convert the MPEG-2 format files (.mp2/.m2v) into .vob files for the DVD. Again, no freeware package I'm aware of does this stuff.

lol noobs

http://www.tmpgenc.net/