Convert realvideo to xvid

[Daemonax]

What tools are there (preferably free-software) that can be used to convert realvideo to avi (xvid)??

Does mencoder do well if I have the real codecs?

I am wanting to liberate some MIT lecture videos from the realvideo format, they are creative commons licensed, but of course can't be played with free-software.
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The God idea is growing more impersonal and nebulous in proportion as the human mind is learning to understand natural phenomena and in the degree that science progressively correlates human and social events. -- Emma Goldman

[fangorn]

If mplayer can play it, so mencoder can encode it. But I had problems with the video settings whenever I encoded (in my case wmv files) to xvid avis (ugly, blocky, crispy picture even with vhq setting). Had better luck with transcode using the -x mplayer,mplayer flag (that AFAIK does not work in all cases)

[Daemonax]

Thank you, I'll give that a try as soon as I get some time.
_________________
The God idea is growing more impersonal and nebulous in proportion as the human mind is learning to understand natural phenomena and in the degree that science progressively correlates human and social events. -- Emma Goldman