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I have been playing around with my replacement phone since my last one crapped out. I chose to buy on eBay rather than get locked in to a multi year contract again. It turns out that it is very simple to slip to SIM card out of the old phone and put in the new one. On top of that, the cost was less than what Cingular was charging with the 2-year lock-in.

Anyway, by playing around with the Phone tools that came with the phone (and several reboots later to get the 4 versions of upgrades necessary. I couldn't find the most recent version on the Motorola site, but did eventually find a more recent version that only required one update cycle on a P2P network. Thank goodness.

I came across a nifty utility called WinAVI that will convert to the 3gp format needed. It's only $29.95 for lifetime upgrades and allows batch conversion. That means I can just drop my video files into a folder and press a button to convert then all. The process is completed by dragging then output files into the /mobile/video folder on the microSD card mounted in the phone. It is a little tricky getting into that mode. Here are the simple steps:
Main Menu->Settings->Connection->USB Setting->Memory Card
I created a shortcut - Menu-10 to make it a bit easier
It seems to requires you to disconnect and then reconnect the USB cable to get it to recognize the new mode. Of course you could also use the media manager software, but I find that more cumbersome. To disconnect, all that is needed is to remove the USB device using the system tray icon and then putting the phone back in data/fax mode.

Another handy program that will convert one at a time is the Nokia Multimedia Player. This program is free and will convert a wide variety of file types as well.