Firstly, I'm not very familiar with the different video formats (not to mention codecs!), so if anyone could recommend a site that explains this I'd be grateful.

Afer receiving a few requests from foreign visitors, I've started making short videos of our sessions using my digital camera. Videos of just a few minutes take up anything from 60 to 100 megs, in MPEG format. However, I've noticed that if I use Movie Maker (comes with Windows) to convert the video to WMV format, the resulting size is only a fraction of the original. Does this mean that quality is compromised, or is the WMV format just compressed?

I want to eventually upload some of these videos to YouTube. What is the best video format to have the file in before uploading?

The original MPEG videos need to be edited (shortened, etc) before uploading to YouTube. Is Movie Maker adequate for the purpose or should I look for something better?

Finally, I've got videos I made of gigs using my (analog) camcorder. I want to digitize these. Do I have to record them to DVD, using a DVD recorder, to do this, or are there other methods?

Thanks in advance, Don