I have anouther question...i am now pretty proficient with using the rendering engine by rendering still shots and then composing them in AE.  i have not done a bad job of it either based on on you alls comments and suggestions and i very much appreciate the help.  my question is;

i have been rendering the stills at 640x480, composing them in AE to create a 4 min clip, however. this 4 min clip is saved as a windows media file (avi) and costs 6.4 Gigs of space on my hard drive.  is there a way to get the same or better quality feature using a different format and not using as much space on the hard drive? I know there has to be some way because a standard DVD only holds about 7 Gigs and you can fit a 4hr feature on it as well as data.

i would appreciate any help. thanx