Personally I think Ray has the best idea, and the way most pro studios do it is to render to a series of numbered bitmap frames. For several reasons - 1) you can re-render a subset, 2) additional post processing capabilities, 3) safety in case of a crash during render, 4) keeps your source loss-less.

Numbered sequences can be loaded into most vid editing software such as uLead, Pinnacle, or my favourite Premiere, then converted to the format you want avi, mpeg wmv etc.

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Toolset: Blender, GIMP, Indigo Render, LuxRender, TopMod, Knotplot, Ivy Gen, Plant Studio.