optimizing video?

[jam]

okay so i have a tonne of wmv files that are too big to play on my laptop without the video distorting or crashing the pc completely, at this point i'm using realplayer to Attempt to play the video's and i'm getting nowhere, is there any easy way i can optimize these video's for my pc (program maybe?) without importing them all into a video editor(which would take ages) and re-publishing them for use on my pc (which would probably also take ages)?

cheers for any help =]

Jam