converting quicktime to WMV

I am not video/computer savvy.
I have a lumix panasonic dmc-TZ5 camera and view my videos now through quicktime. However, when I go to show them to different people that don’t have or know about quicktime they cannot open them.

Is there a way to convert them to wmv’s without having to pay $100 for a fancy converter/plug in program. I have a mac os 10.4.11.

I do not know what a codec/plug in or avi or any other fancy terms are, so please talk in simple (101) language - ) Thank you.

I suggest telling the people to download quicktime (it’s freeware after all) or at least quicktime alternative. They can also try VLC Media Player (http://www.videolan.org also freeware, but much cleaner than quicktime: no junk).

Now if you want to convert... Doesn’t Mac OS X come with iMovie or something like that? (much like Windows XP and newer comes with Windows Movie Maker)
I don’t know what iMovie supports as export formats, but look around. Maybe you’ll have a choice for AVI somewhere (if so that will make things a lot easier). Or maybe MPEG.

If not, try MPEG Streamclip for the Mac. It’s freeware.
http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html
See what formats you can export to. If you can do MPEG-1 that’s the best choice, because almost any computer (PC, Mac, Unix, etc.) can play MPEG-1.
If you don’t get the choice MPEG-1, pick AVI instead. With AVI, you’ll likely have to pick a video codec. I can’t tell you a surefire one to pick because I don’t think there’s a video codec (of decent quality) that all Windows computers have (most that are common to all Windows computers like Cinepak, Microsoft Video 1, and Indeo 3 are really old crappy codecs by today’s standards). You can try Motion JPEG if you have the choice. Otherwise try DivX or Xvid (the person receiving the video may need to install those codecs (xvid or divx) as they’re not bundled with Windows, but it’s rare to find someone who doesn’t have xvid or divx on their PC these days).

As for converting to wmv on a mac, the only program I know that can do it is flip4mac, and it’s pay.