[ILUG] [May be OT, May not] Video recoding/transcoding

[Hamilton, David (TSG C&I)]

I have a large quantity of video files that I want to put onto DVD.
These files were recorded using a Hauppauge USB PVR on a Windows
machine, and currently exist as about 30 files of about 4Gb each on an
external NTFS drive.
When I try to convert these files using Adone Premiere Elements 2.0 on
Windows, it freezes at certain points in each of them.
The points are different for each file, but repeated attemts on one file
freeze in the same place each time.
I would like to pass these files through a recoding or transcoding
process in order to try and clean them up since re-recording is not an
option.
I am guessing that my best option would be to use the NTFS read driver
for Linux, and try to recode them, but I haven't really done this
before.
I mugfht even be able to get something to go straight from the MPG files
to DVD which would be even better.

Does anyone have any experience of doing this?

Thanks,
	David.