Convert MP4 video to AVI/DviX or DVD

A friend of mine gave me some .MP4 videos of a 4 parts podcast he downloaded. I want to convert 'em to an AVI (DivX/XVid) or a DVD or even VCD/MPEG. Unfortunately, they were encoded differently, different bit rates, resolutions, etc, so I can't eventually join them into one seamless file. I can convert 'em to DivX with Dr.DivX but it seems to crash on some MP4 files, not all, just some. I don't want to use Quick Media Converter because it installs codecs; the last time I installed it and uninstalled it (it locked up and didn't convert a Quicktime MOV file but that was probably my fault) it took some of my codecs with it and I had a mess to clean up. So, can someone suggest something I can use to convert MP4 videos to a different more 'friendly' format?

Thanks!

 

It's done. In case anyone gives a :crap... I used Dr.DivX and added all four MP4 files at once and did a batch convert. It took about 8 or 10 minutes per file.....

 

Glad to se you found a solution- added it to my collection- for future use-codec conversion is a little bit of a delemma sometimes.