Video editing, formats, and conversion

From my video camera, I transfer the .avi files (which use the strange M4S2 codec) to my PC. They need to be transcoded to something before anyone else can watch them (since nobody would have M4S2). I use QuickTime (for Windows) for this purpose. It cost me around $30. I suppose Windows Movie Maker would do the trick for free if I could get it to understand the raw .avi files from the camera. Ironic that it doesn't considering that M4S2 is a Microsoft concoction.

Here are some example conversions of a few seconds of track footage. I suspect some won't play on your PC depending what codecs and players you have installed. This clip was about 5MB from the camera.

• QCIF MPEG-4 .mp4 file @ 384kbps = 0.35 MB
• Cinepack .avi file @ medium quality = 7.4 MB
• MPEG-4 .mov file @ medium quality = 1.7 MB
• H.264 (aka MPEG-4 AVC) .mov file @ medium quality = 1.5 MB
• H.264 (aka MPEG-4 AVC) .mov file @ best quality = 10.4 MB

Which formats do you think are "worth it"? Also, anything uploaded to a web sharing site will be seriously downgraded in terms of quality. Some sites are better than others. YouTube is among the worst.