Hi,
I have backed up dvds at home. the problem is that they take up too much space. I am looking

for a freeware program that would decrease the size of the file. if it were possible to have

the file take up half the screen instead of the full screen - surely this would have the

file size?

Any suggestions?

Thank you.

Hiya,
What format are the files stored in on your computer, a raw format like AVI or a compressed format like WMV or MPEG?

A tool that you will find surprisingly useful is Windows Movie Maker which is bundled with XP and Vista. However, you are limited to WMV format, which really isn't a problem if you want to back up DVDs and later restore them in case of a problem.

Simply import your video into Movie Maker which can be found under the Accessories menu of the Start Menu and then select the entire collection once the import has completed and add it to the timeline. Then go to File > Save Movie File... and select the My Computer option and click Next. Choose where you want to save the file and click Next. You are then presented with the Movie Settings Menu. Here you can edit the Bit Rate, size of the outputted file, etc and at the bottom it will tell you how much space the exported movie will take up and the size of the video.

Hope this helps