I don't know well others, but there's plenty of application.
After, there's the 'authoring step', and in this case DVD Lab is my favorite because it's the only which allows you to author multiple (S)VCD movies in a DVD.
Just a suggestion (which no one follows): an AVI is 600-900 MB. A DVD is 5-9 GB (5000 - 9000 GB). Remember: Garbage IN = Garbage OUT.
All DVD players read VCDs and almost everyone reds SVCDs (check your player's specifications). Except for the need to split a movie in 2/3 CDs (80' of VCD movie and 55' of SVCD movie fit into 80' CD-R SVCD), making a MPEG-2 for DVD will give almost the same result of a encoding that AVI into a MPEG-1 for VCD the same result and the encoding time is almost 20 times larger.
And with DVD Lab you can fit 5-6 movies in a DVD, if you don't like the the 'splitting' part...
