shadow i downloaded the bink & smack free version.
it doesnt allow you to edit out scenes (as far as i know) and most prgrammes wont recognise the bink format for editing so far.
so i save as uncompressed avi first, then I edit the films, and then I binkit to 10% of the original,change 25fps to 12fps (sometimes add smooth at 3).You can bink it again to compress more and more and preview it whilst you do it so if it looks too rough you can stop it and redo it at lower compression %.Reallly cool feature. And if im trying to make the film look aged I add in the brightness(i'll post a short clip for film 3 if you like which is a pretty good effect, its only short but even so at only 500kb its pretty amazing compression)
Bink also adds sound very well (and simply!) but if you convert back to avi using the bink converter so far ive lost the sound again.This is why really i like to keep them in bink format.Ive tried adding sound with other programmes but they seem to distort the sound a lot more than bink does when they compress the films or if non compress take up a lot of space.
I must say wotan has recommended real producer basic and its also a superb compressor.If you need small files and dont mind the odd blurry segment theres nothing that comes close to the size it makes the files.(see my other posts for wotans links)
for editing the films ive been using virtualdub.Pretty easy to use as far as cutting out scenes and appending the avi's.
ok?