I did tons of experimenting with every video codec when I got my 4mb All-In-Wonder (back in 98). I'd record busy videos with lots of animation and detail as well as simpler videos with less motion and flatter regions (like cartoons), and try out every setting on all the codes.
My conclusion was that the MS video 1 sucked. Earlier indeo's also sucked.
The winner by and large was the Intel Indeo 5 codec. It had the most consistently best compression (compared to the other avi codecs available pre-divx), and when you blew it up to full screen it ran as smooth as day. Cinepack was somewhat comparable in compression (though I personally don't like the cinepack compression artifacts), but it took 20 times as long to perform the compression. Indeo was orders of magnitude faster, and included a "quick" mode. The indeo audio compression was much better too (though not comparible to mp3 or wma)
Mpeg-4 was amazing for low-bitrate video, but faltered at higher bitrates.
This is of course excluding mpeg1 & 2 because at the time those were expensive extras I didn't have.
So, anyway, if you don't want ot use divx but want the ease of a simple avi codec (whatever that means), I highly recommend indeo 5 (or whatever newer version there is).
I highly recommend against realvideo or quicktime because the only video players that support them suck major ass.
JMT.
(looks like Ligos has acquired indeo?)
