I've been making home movies off of my Sony Digital Camcorder for a while now. I've been encoding them in RealPlayer or Windows Media Player formats. I'd like to make the switch to DVD format.

This is where my trouble starts. I don't know anything about this format. Is DVD just another way of saying MPEG4....or is it MPEG2? What software or codecs do I need in order to accomplish this?

My main concern is file size. Am I even going to be saving file size if I move to this codec? Or are they pretty much the same? If they are the same, I'd like to try coding in DVD. (So it'll play on DVD players and not just computers.)

As you can see, I have many questions and few answers. Perhaps it would be easier if I just knew a good website or two I could read up on all of this. Does anyone have any help for me? Thanks in advance for any information!