Vista Tutorial - Using DVD maker without a physical DVD

Can Windows DVD Maker in Vista output an image file of a DVD, or output VOB
files, or can it only write its output directly to a DVD burner?
If it can only output to a burner, then are there any burner emulators which
can redirect DVD Maker's output to an image file?
I have dozens of AVI files which I need to batch convert to DVD images or
VOB files and then burn them to physical discs after the batch conversion is
complete, because even on my 2GHz Athlon 64, DVD Maker takes literally hours
during its encoding phase when creating a DVD, and my schedule doesn't allow
me to babysit the computer and swap out DVDs every few hours.
A background task which batch converts everything (even if it takes several
days to finish) is what I need. I have plenty of hard disk space.