Commandline syntax to convert avi movie to mp4

[ngcjim]

I am setting up an astronomical observatory that has a camera that creates an AVI movie of the night sky each and every night. I've used VLC to manually convert the AVI to mp4 each morning so it can be uploaded to the web. So...

Can the commandline automate this task? For example is there a command like:

vlc.exe --convert file.avi file.mpr

I did not see a covert command in the help doc. If so do you know the syntax?

thanks very much
Jim