Simplest, safest way to convert files to mac friendly types?

I'm a very recent switcher to Mac. I've been searching all around for different ways to make my video files mac friendly. I have a lot of them--many of which are original works. It's very important that I do not lose quality in the change over, but I would really like for the files to be able to show up in itunes and such.

So, basically, I'm searching for a way to convert all the videos that have been happily residing on my Windows machine over to a Mac friendly file format without losing quality. And, being that I have a lot of videos, I'm hoping there's a way to do this in batch.

Any ideas?

If you just want to be able to watch them on your Mac, then there's really no need to convert them. You can watch essentially any video format on your Mac, just download the Perian codec and VLC media player.

The only reason to really import them all into iTunes is to make them available for transfer to iPods or iPhones. Do you have an iPod or iPhone that you would like to transfer the videos to? If so, then download a program called iSquint (free) and it'll convert almost anything you throw at it to a format that can be transferred to the iPod/iPhone.

It's not really about just watching them. As it is now, Quicktime will play pretty much anything. It's more about allowing the computer to function as kind of a media center that's operable from across the room using the remote. The computer is attached to a sizable display that can easily act like a television. But none of that does me much good unless the media files reside in iTunes. So I figured the best policy would be to just convert everything and get used to work with that instead of having a birds nest of various file types.

Ahh, you want to use it as a media center (presumably with Front Row?). In that case you should still be able to use iSquint, just make sure you select the "Optimize for TV" option

Great! Thank you very much!