Some users may like this feature that much that they may decide to switch to VLC as their main media player. If you do not have it installed already, you can download it from the official website. VLC is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems, and the conversion options should be available in all versions.

Start VLC and click on Media > Convert / Save. You can alternative press Ctrl-R to open the dialog window. The File screen is used to add media files that you want to convert. Just click the add button and use the file browser to add a media file.

You can add a subtitle file if you want or activate the Show more options setting to display advanced options that usually do not need modification.

A click on the Convert / Save opens the final step of the configuration. The destination folder and conversion profile are selected on this screen.

VLC ships with a good dozen profiles from that convert the selected video into another format. Supported formats among others are mp4, webm, ts and ogg. Options are also available to convert only the audio source or to create custom transcoding profiles.

A click on the New Profile button opens a configuration screen where a new video conversion profile can be created.

This includes selected a video and audio codec, encapsulation and subtitles. Additional video and audio codecs as well as encapsulations are available for selection here.

VLC will process the selected media in the main application window. This is indicated by a Streaming status and the fast forwarding of the selected video file.

And that’s all there is to it. It is convenient to use VLC to convert videos if the program is installed on the system. The advanced profile options should be suitable for most conversion jobs.

It seems that it is not possible to convert multiple videos at once and save them as separate files, at least not in the GUI. If you know a way how to do that let me know in the comments.

Kastor Free Video Converter is a free, easy to use, video format converter for the Windows operating system. It supports single and batch conversions of many different video formats. Among the supported file formats are avi, mpg, mp4, mov, mkb, flv and about a dozen additional files.

You can add video files via the Add Files button at the top. Just select video files from the local directory. You need to make sure that the directories do not contain spaces in their names. If they do, the program will fail to convert the video files and generate files with a size of 0 in the selected output directory.

Video files added to the program this way are then listed with various information including their file name and format in the interface. It is possible to convert only part of the video by using the preview area slider. The preview area displays only video stills which feels a bit strange, considering that you cannot play the video in the application to change start and end times exactly.

Still, it is a feature that many other video converters do not support at all.

The output settings define the output video format that all videos added to the listing will be converted into.

Several output formats are available among them the majority of supported input formats plus device specific video formats for devices like Apple’s iPhone, Ipad, Sony’s Playstation 3 or audio only.

A click on Settings displays advanced video conversion options including the video cideoc, size, fps, bitrate and audio related settings.

You can select an output format from the preset listing as well, which offers additional format variations not available under the Output Format menu.

All videos listed in the program will be converted into the selected video format. A progress indicator next to each video listing indicates the progress of each individual conversion.

Kastor Free Video Converter is a handy tool for users who want to convert one or multiple videos into another video format. The application has a few shortcomings like missing support for directories with spaces or a preview feature that is not sufficient for previewing videos. The core feature on the other hand, video conversions, is handled fast and sophisticatedly.

The video conversion software seems to require the Microsoft .NET Framework. The required version is unfortunately not mentioned on the project website.

Interested Windows users can download the free video converter from Kastorsoft.

Video Converter for Windows is a video conversion software that supports all popular video formats and then some that you probably never heard of before. Chance is, if it is a video then Video Converter can convert it for you. Lets take a look at the supported video and audio formats, and the corresponding output formats first.

Supported video and audio input formats

• Standard video formats: AVI, MP4, MPG, MPEG, DPG, VOB, 3GP, 3G2, WMV, ASF, RM, RMVB, DAT, MOV, FLV, f4v, DVR-MS, M4V, MKV, MOD, TOD, GIF, AP3, AIF, DV, NUT, NSV
• HD video formats: MTS, TS, M2TS, TP, TRP,TOD, HD MKV, HD WMV, HD MOD, HD MOV, HD FLV
• Audio: AA, AAX, AAC, AC3, AIFF, APE, AMR, AU, CUE, FLAC, MP3, M4A, M4B, M4P, M4R, MKA, MPA, MP2, OGG, RA, RAM, WAV, WMA

Supported video and audio output formats

• Standard video formats: ASF, MOV, M4V, MP4 Video（AVC）, MP4 Video（Xvid）, MP4 Video（MC）, WMV, MKV, AVI, Xvid, DV, MPEG-1, NTSC, MPEG-1 PAL, MPEG-1 SECAM, MPEG-2 NTSC, MPEG-2 PAL, MPEG-2 SECAM, DVD-Video NTSC, DVD-Video PAL, DVD-Video SECAM
• HD video formats: TS, TRP, AVI, MP4, MPG, WMV, MOV
• Common Audio: MP3, M4A, AC3, AAC, WMA, WAV, OGG, APE, MKA, AU, AIFF, FLAC, M4B
• Online Video: FLV, F4V, SWF, YouTube Video, YouTube Video HD, Facebook Video, Yahoo Video, Vkontakte.ru Video

Video Converter for Windows

There is not a lot to see when you start up Video Converter. A menu bar on the top, a header bar with some icons and two larger panes of which the right can be used to preview videos that have been added to the left.

Videos can be added by dragging and dropping them into the program interface, or by using the File > Add Video Files, Add Video Folder or Load files from devices. The toolbar button offers similar options except for adding a video folder.

Information about each video that has been added are displayed in its left-pane listing. This includes the video’s playtime, resolution and size, but also audio and subtitle information.

Videos can be previewed right away by selecting them first and clicking the play button in the video player on the right pane. The video player offers the usual controls like pausing, using a slider to go back and forth or a volume control.

A click on the output settings icon on the right of the listed videos opens a menu with all available video output options.

As you can see on the screenshot above there is a lot to chose from. Available are device specific conversions with all popular devices available from Apple devices such as the iPad or iPhone, o Microsoft’s Zune, Creative Zen, Game Hardware, Blackberry to HTC and Nokia.

In addition common video formats, online video conversions and custom conversions are offered. It is possible to convert a video into a Youtube HD or Facebook video with ease using the software.

A click on the settings icon next to the selected video output opens an Advanced tab with options to make changes to conversion. Here it is possible to change the audio and video encoder, resolution, sample rate, frame rate or bitrate among other things which can be saved as custom profiles. Users from countries that use PAL and not NTSC need to change the frame rate of the videos manually here if they want to play it on a device that only supports PAL. An option to change the default frame rate would have been handy, but does not seem to be there.

Users can overcome it by creating custom profiles that they then use to convert the files.

A click on Convert converts the video into the selected format. The conversions are speedy, and NVIDIA users with a CUDA compatible video card can make use of the graphics processing unit to speed up the conversion further.

It is furthermore possible to merge the video files into one file which will basically create one video file out of all video files that have been added by the user.

The output format is located in the My Documents folder of the user profile. It can be changed easily in the program options along with the temp directory or the number of cpu cores used for the conversion.

Videos can be clipped and edited before they are processed. This is done by selecting the video in the main program interface and clicking on the Click or Edit buttons afterwards.

The video editor offers to change several aspects of the video. It is possible to crop it, change the aspect ratio and to add effects, watermarks and subtitles to it. The original video and the edited video are displayed on the same screen with changes being directly visible on the screen.

Video Converter for Windows Verdict

Video Converter for Windows is a handy program for users who need to convert video formats. The program supports all important video formats and a lot of lesser known ones as well. Conversions are very fast, especially with CUDA compatible video cards. The only gripe that I had during the review was that it was not possible to change the default frame rate in the video convert.

All in all it is a fantastic program to convert videos on the Windows operating system.

Video Converter for Windows Giveaway

We have 30 licenses for Video Converter for Windows which you can win. Just leave a comment below for a chance to win a license. Interested users can download a trial version from the program’s homepage.

MeGUI can be a very complex program if the user decides to tweak all the parameters that it offers. This guide will give a short introduction on how to start converting videos with meGUI.

MeGUI requires the Open Source program Avisynth which needs to be installed. It is best to install Avisynth first and then meGUI. MeGUI will check for updates on the next startup. This includes program components but also encoding profiles. Make sure you select to import the encoding profiles that you plan on using. Profiles are available to convert videos to DVD or Blu-Ray format, make them compatible with the iPhone or iPod and other devices like the Playstation 3, Xbox 360 or the T-Mobile G1.

Steps to convert videos with meGUI:

Start by clicking on Tools > AVS Script Creator. This opens a new menu. Add a video to the Video Input field in the I/O tab.

Click on Auto Crop, switch to the Filters tab and click there on the Analyse button. This takes a while, click Save in the end.

This closes the AviSynth script creator window and brings you back to the first window.

Check the Video Output parameter and change it to another location if you do not want to save the file in the same directory as the original. Now click on Encoder Settings and select one of the profiles. Click on the enqueue button under Video encoding.

Go down to the audio tab and select the same video file for audio input. Select a proper encoder setting as well. Enqueue the audio as well.

Switch to the Queue tab and click on the start button to start the encoding.

This takes some time depending on the video but also the speed of the computer system.

The final step is to mux the audio and video. This is done by clicking on Tools > Muxer and selecting the appropriate tool (either avi, mkv or mp4) from the available options. Add the processed video and audio in the new window and queue the muxing in the end. Switch back to the queue tab and click the start button to start the muxing which will join the video and audio in the resulting video format.

MeGUI offers tools and options to automate the process. Especially the one click encoder can automate most of it but it has to be configured first before it can be used.

Which software or tools are you using to convert videos?

Video files can be loaded by using the Add button in the header of the program. It is here possible to add one or multiple videos which are then displayed with various information in the program’s interface.

The information listed include the name and audio language of the video, playtime, bitrate and codecs.

The output folder and the start and end time of each video can be configured individually.

The lower half of the screen displays various output options in tabs. This ranges from converting the selected videos to general video formats, HD video, Apple, Sony or Microsoft specific formats, portable devices and audio.

Each selection displays a list of possible formats that can be selected for the output. The general video tab for instance can be used to convert the videos to avi, mpeg, wmv or a format supported by Youtube while the HD Video formats basically list the same formats but with HD quality.

A few processing options are displayed beneath the format selection including audio and video quality settings, cpu core selection, high quality rendering engine and others.

• Support Multi-track HD Video – The first video converter that supports converting Multi-track HD video such as BDAV, M2TS, MKV, and AVCHD. You can freely choose audio language track and video track.
• Convert HD and SD Video – Built-in 160 video codecs and 50 audio codecs, WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe can convert between all popular video formats without assistance of any third-party codecs.
• Support Blu-ray, M2TS, BDAV – Support BDAV, TrueHD, M2TS, MPEG-TS A/V, a definitely useful feature when making a digital copy to backup your Blu-ray video.
• Multi-Core and Hyper Threading – WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe supports Multi-core CPU and Hyper-threading, which can offers you up to 5x‐15x real time converting speed.
• Support HD-Camcorder Video – Make an easy way to convert your HD-Camcorder videos to most popular video formats, so that you can burn it to DVD and edit the video in Windows Media Center.
• Make Website Videos – Help you convert video to the format which can be supported by YouTube, Myspace Video, Metacafe, or you Blog.
• Easy to Use with Professional Setting and Optimized Profiles – Have numerous presetting profiles to satisfy all your need. And the entire adjustable parameter settings enable you to make your own profile.
• Extract Audio and Images from Video – Extract audio tracks and save as MP3 music file. Extract single frame as JPEG or BMP picture. It can make your video converting experience have much more fun.
• Automatically Fix Incorrect Video Data – If your player can’t properly play some videos, or you have some corrupt video files, it will auto mend these incorrect data, such as the Video Aspect Ratio, and also you can set it manually.
• Support Both Portable Player and Console Player – Such as iPad, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, PS3, PSP, X-box, Zune, PDA, Blackberry, Nokia, Android, Zen, etc. With the auto-setting tags in the video, you can easily check the original video name and artists’ name in iPhone, iPad, or iPod.

The video converter is easy to use considering that the output format settings can usually be left in their default state. The multi core cpu support improves the rendering speed of the program considerably.

WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe is currently offered for free at the WinX website. The software retails for $49.95 regularly. The offer to download the program for free is provided until March 15.

The interface of Media Converter Ultimate does not throw the user of with lots of switches and other confusing elements that can irritate inexperienced users. The essential options are displayed in the main menu. This includes adding videos or loading DVD contents.

Videos can be added individually or by selecting a folder which will add all videos that are stored in that folder.

Several interface elements become active after videos have been added to the list of files to convert. Each video will be listed with its source file name, duration and destination file name. A right-click opens a context menu with options to rename or remove the videos. Some actions are inactive but become available if subtitles or multiple audio tracks are supported by the selected video formats.

Each video can be previewed using the small media player on the right.

The settings in the footer area become available after videos have been added to the program. These settings are valid for all videos that are added to the queue which should not be a problem for most users. Some users on the other hand might like more flexibility here so that videos could be converted into different formats in one process.

The video format (and audio format if available) can be selected in this step. A click on the down arrow next to the audio and video file pulldown menu will open a large list of formats and devices the videos can be converted into.

Supported Formats

• DVD: DVD Folder, IFO Files, ISO File
• Standard Video: M4V, AVI, MP4, MPG, MPEG, 3GP, 3G2, WMV, ASF, RM, RMVB, DAT, MOV, FLV, MKV, DV, NUT, H.264, NSV, VOB, DVR-MS
• HD Video: HD AVI(VC-1, MPEG-4), MTS/M2TS/TS/TRP(AVHD H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2 HD), HD WMV(VC-1, WMV HD), HD MKV(H.264), HD MOV(H.264), HD MPG(MPEG-2 HD), HD MP4(H.264, Xvid)
• Audio: M4A, M4B, M4P, M4R, MP3, M4A, MP2, MPA, WMA, AAC, AC3, MKA, OGG, AIFF, RA, RAM, WAV, APE, FLAC, AA, AAX

That’s a comfortable way of displaying the available choices. Users do not have to worry about resolutions, bitrates and other advanced parameters at this point. If their device is in the list they can select it and are ready to convert the videos without having to worry about those advanced parameters.

Supported devices:

• iPod, iPod nano, iPod classic, iPod shuffle, iPod touch, iPod Touch 3G
• iPhone, iPhone 3G, Apple TV
• PSP, PS3
• Xbox, Xbox 360
• Android MPEG-4(*.mp4), HTC T-Mobile G1, HTC G2 Magic, HTC Hero, HTC Tattoo, HTC DROID ERIS, T-MOBILE myTouch 3G, SamSung i7500, Motorola CLIQ, Motorola droid
• BlackBerry Storm 9630/9550/9530, BlackBerry 8800/8830/8820, BlackBerry Bold 9700/9000
• BlackBerry Curve 8900/ 8530/ 8520/ 8300/ 8310/ 8320/ 8330/ 8350i
• BlackBerry Pearl Flip8220/ Flip8230/ 8100/ 8110/ 8120/ 8130
• General 3GP mobile phone, BlackBerry, etc.
• General MP4 players: Archos, Creative Zen,Zune, Zune HD, iRiver, etc.
• Window Mobile device: Pocket PC, Smart Phone, PDA, etc.

Advanced users on the other hand can make use of the Settings button to change those parameters. This includes video and audio parameters like the frame rate, bit rate or video and audio encoder.

A click on the Start button will start the media conversion. Media Converter Ultimate uses multi-threading and all cores of multi-core cpus to speed up the conversions.

Converted videos can be moved to connected devices from within the program after all conversions have finished. That’s helpful for users who convert videos that they want to view on those devices.

It is furthermore possible to burn videos to disk. Media Converter Ultimate can created DVD templates and convert the selected videos into a format that is compatible with DVD video before they get burned to DVD.

DRM Removing

This feature was not tested due to a lack of files with DRM. It can, according to the developer, deal with several DRM formats that are used by iTunes, BBC iPlayer, Audible Audiobook and Windows Media.

Whether the “Fair Use” of iTunes’ .m4p music .m4v video .m4b audiobook, or the “Play for Sure” of Windows Media protected .wma .wmv files, or even BBC iPlayer WMV, Audible Audiobook AA, now DRM will be no longer the sham to deprive our fair usage rights, Media Converter Ultimate will disable DRM license easily.

Christmas Giveaway

We have ten licenses of Daniusoft Media Converter Ultimate that we can give away. Leave a comment for a chance to win one of the licenses.

Raju is giving away Axialis screensaver Producer at his blog, check it out.

The free video converter Movavi Online Convert is an excellent tool to convert videos on the Internet. It can convert files that are uploaded from the local computer system but also videos that are already stored on the Internet. Online video portals that are currently supported are for example Youtube, Dailymotion, Google Videos, MySpace or Break.com.

Up to five videos that do not exceed a total size of 100 Megabytes and an individual playtime of 10 minutes can either be uploaded or entered with their url in the online video converter. A multitude of different output formats is available including avi and mpeg but also specific formats for devices such as iPods, iPhones or mobile phones.

The advanced options provide the means to customize the conversion further. It is for example possible to change the output width and height of the video or to change the video and audio quality.

A click on the start button will initiate the upload of the videos if they have been selected from the local system. Users can check the merge checkbox if they want to merge all the selected videos in one larger video.

The videos will be added to the program queue. At the time of writing the queue number was at 932. That’s a long time to wait. It is fortunately possible to add an email address to be informed when the video conversion has been finished. The queue window can be closed if an email address is supplied.

Movavi’s online video converter is a comfortable online tool that makes it dead easy to convert videos on the Internet.

XMedia Recode falls into both categories. The video convert comes with several pre-configured profiles that can be used to convert videos with just a few clicks and no background knowledge at all.

Profiles exist for gaming systems like Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Sony’s Playstation 3 and for mobile devices like Apple’s iPod and iPhone series, dozens of Nokia cell phones and other devices. Way more than 100 profiles are available to select and there is the option to select custom settings as well in case the device is not in the list.

Custom settings are very extensive. Dozens of video and output formats and codecs can be selected to convert the video into a different format.

Video files can be opened from the computer’s hard drive or directly from DVD (which can also be located on the hard drive)

XMedia Recode provides features that most video converters do not. Most of these features are located in the Crop / Preview tab. This includes the option to cut part of the movie, change the resolution, crop the movie, deblock, invert or correct the colors.

The video converter is probably a bit easier to use than Super, one of our favorites. The software uses a German interface by default which can be changed in Optionen > Sprache to English, French, Japanese and Italian.

One of the nicest features of StaxRip is the fact that it can download needed codecs and utilities from within the program interface. If you dealt with Open Source video encoders before you might have experienced that you needed to download and install the needed extras manually before the tool could be used.

StaxRip makes use of templates to speed up configuring the various settings and can convert or merge single or multiple files in one go. A video file that is loaded as a source will automatically be analyzed by the video encoding software and important values such as framerate, length or size will be shown in the interface. The same variables are shown in the destination pane where they will be automatically updated when the user changes a setting.

Videos can be resized to reduce the size of the destination video which is extremely useful when encoding videos for mobile devices like the Sony PSP, a mobile phone or an iPod that can play videos.

The output audio and video codecs have to be chosen. Multiple encoding profiles are available that range from fast to high quality encodings. The codecs can be configured furthermore for optimal results.

Video encoding speed depends on the configuration and the speed of the computer hardware.

The process itself is explained in a few words. The user enters a search phrase, selects between all or a single video portal and defines the amount of results that he wants returned. A test with 10000 search results was successful, it`s probably safe to say that you can even use a higher figure than that safely.

All results are displayed in the main pane with information like name, video description, duration, age and views. If the user clicks on a video he gets to see a preview of it in the left sidebar with the option to play and download that single video. Multiple videos can be checked and downloaded together as well which is where the strength of the application lies.

Hitting the download button after checking multiple videos will download those videos from the video portal they are hosted at. The output format can be selected as well which I recommend to do before you start download videos. The option is available under the Tube Downloader tab. Several predefined formats can be selected such as iPhone, PSP, iPod, Avi or no conversion.

It is also possible to select custom settings which enables selection of the audio and video codec, output size and bitrate among other settings.

The Free FLV Converter offers a second way of displaying search results. Instead of listing them by name and other details you can generate a thumbnail view which is extremely comfortable if you like preview pictures of the videos.

I have to admit that this is one – if not the – most comfortable way to download multiple videos from a variety of video sites. That in combination with simultaneous downloads and automatic conversions make this an invaluable tool for everyone who downloads videos regularly.

If you do change the quality settings the information about the output file size will change. A higher quality of course means that the converted file becomes bigger, lower quality reduces the filesize.

You may finally choose to edit tag information such as title, author, genre and copyright information. Clicking ok adds the file to the queue. Once that is done for all videos that you want to convert for your iPod video you see a window similar to the one on the left side.

It displays a preview of the converted movie as well as information about remaining and elapsed time and overall conversion rate.

All files are saved in mp4 format which can be played back in the video iPod.

Just follow the five steps to convert the divx movies, you can add an unlimited number of movies to the list to convert everything in one run. Just select the first movie, add a new name if you do not want to overwrite the original file and take a look at the options. Change the video and audio quality which is a good way to reduce the file size if you don’t want the files to grow to big.

Add the file to the list and repeat the process for all the files that you want to convert. Use the preview option to take a look at the results before you proceed the whole list of files. The option to change the file parameters is great, a new window pops up showing the movie in the device that you have selected.