I have varying types of media files and i wold like to know what one would be the best (smallest w/o signifigant quality loss) for the video, and could you direct me to a site where i can get a converter to that format.
Smallest video format
DivX is your best best. http://www.divx.com
Use VirtualDub to make the conversions. http://www.virtualdub.org
Personal stuff that I want to keep, I usually encode at Constant Quality of around 90%. That usually gets me about a 6:1 compression compared to the original DV.