Information Addicts

Most home users have on average between 2GB and 20GB of video files on their computer hard drives, either downloaded from the internet, or from video cameras, that are never seen again, or shown to family and friends. This is because either they don’t know how to transfer the files, or haven’t got the right tools for the job. Maybe you have a home movie you would like to transfer to your PSP, iPod or even on to Dvd, but are in need of the right software to convert it, and don’t know where to get it from or don’t want to pay for it.
Then look no further as I trawled the internet to find you the best 3 free video conversion tools money can’t buy. Well maybe these software websites might accept a little donation.
They are in no particular order .

MediaCoder
This free application converts most video/audio files from one format to another.
If you need to transform media files between formats, shrink files with little quality loss, or even extract audio from video files then this application can do it for you.

MediaCoder will convert files between media formats giving you a great deal of control over the output. So for example if you have a file that you would like to convert so it can be played on a portable media player, MediaCoder will do the trick.
MediaCoder offers many advanced features, and is a great application for advanced users or users who like to tinker with media files.

Features:

• Convert to and from many audio and video compression formats and re-multiplex into various container formats in batches
• Full control over transcoding parameters, you can learn about audio/video encoding and play with various codecs
• Strong decoding capability for partial or corrupted contents
• Simplified Users interface for popular mobile devices (e.g. PSP, iPod)
• Fully standalone, no dependence on system codecs/splitters
• Improving compression / reducing size for audio/video files
• Converting for audio/video playback devices (digital audio player, MP4 player, mobile phone, PDA, PSP, VCD/DVD player etc.)
• Extracting audio tracks from video files
• Ripping audio/video discs
• Repairing corrupted or partial downloaded video files

Whats more this free application converts all these file formats and more, MP3, Vorbis, AAC, AAC+, AAC+v2, MusePack, WMA, RealAudio, FLAC, WavPack, Monkey’s Audio, OptimFrog, AAC Lossless, WMA Lossless, TTA, WAV/PCM Xvid, MPEG 1/2/4, Theora, Flash Video, Dirac, RealVideo, Windows Media Video, AVI, MPEG/VOB, Matroska, MP4, PMP, RealMedia*, ASF, Quicktime, CD, VCD, and DVD.

Mediacoder has many features, and is not really for beginners, however, there is plenty of online help, and if you would like to be able to convert just about every type of media files, then this could be the application for you. Click on the link to go to the MediaCoder Webpage.

Apex Video Converter
This is a simple program which is very easy to use and converts AVI, DivX, XviD, MPEG, WMV, MOV, ASF, QuickTime , RM, RMVB into AVI, DivX or XviD formats only.
Key features :

• Set the start and end of the video clip to get your desired segment to convert .
• Supports large video files, larger than 2GB.
• Supports Batch Conversion.
• Select to automatically shut down your PC after conversions

As I wrote earlier this is a basic program, however it does the job well and converts the files very quickly, you can also set the frame rate, video size and if needed trim your clip. If you want more functionality then you can upgrade, but at a price. Click on the link to go to the Apex website.

Avi2Dvd
This tool easily converts any Avi/Ogm/Mkv/Wmv/Dvd video file in to a Dvd/Svcd or Vcd that you can watch on TV. It uses a 5 tabbed menu that simplifies the whole process for creating your DVD. This program allows you to add your own MP3 audio tracks as menu background music, include subtitles, and also has a Dvd menu editor. It is reasonably fast, very easy to use and also Vista compatible.

Features:

• Supports multiple audio-streams and up to three textual external subtitles
• Supports DV-AVI videos, so it can handle captured avi’s from digital video cameras
• Avi2dvd can also produce semi professional dvd menus with chapter/audio/subtitles

This is a very capable piece of software if all you want is to do is watch your video on Dvd/Svcd or Vcd. Well worth a look. Here is the website.

Do you use another free video converter and consider it better than those above?
Then let me know in the comments just below.

Popularity: 7% [?]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 at 10:46 am and is filed under PC Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.