I hope that you get this question again as I accidentally lost your reply when transferring the email from my husband's mail to mine.  I had logged in under his address  for Microsoft Help and now your response is floating around somewhere in cyberspace.  It's been a difficult week overall!

I don't remember all of your  2nd response to my question, but I did try changing the bit rate.  I upped it to the max at 135k.  The movie still looked digitized or perhaps pixelated is a better description---little dots on the edges of trees, objects and slightly blurry.

While looking thru answers about Movie Maker, I noticed another reply you had given to someone about movies looking "soft" on DVD's.  You suggested using a USB thumbdrive.  I've tried that and it looks much, much better---more like my original pictures.  Hooray!  Now I have some other questions:

1.  What is the longevity of a thumbdrive?  I'm hoping to have some media that I don't need to redo every 5-10 years.

2.  Which would preserve my HD videos in better archival condition, a thumbdrive or a blu-ray disc?

3.  If a thumbdrive is a good option, then is there a particular brand that you would recommend or characteristics that I should consider when purchasing one?

My goal is to preserve the movies with the best possible resolution on the most archival storage media for as long as possible.  I'm also backing up files on a external hard drive.  I want a portable medium that we can look at our vacation movies whenever and is durable for frequent usage.

Many thanks for all of your help.

Luci