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Introduction
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There are many different audio and video formats out there, and most devices (such as the iPod) and programs (such as Windows Media Player) will only take a few specific formats. A DVD or WMV movie will not play on an iPod, for example, without being converted into an MP4 file. Many commercial programs will do this conversion for you, but there are a few good ones that will do it for free. None of these programs are quite perfect, and they tend to fall into a few general categories:
While some are better than others overall, which one is best for you will depend on what sort of program you need. Note: I don't own DVDs, so I'm not qualified to review DVD rippers. If you want to review them, or have software suggestions, leave them here. |
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Discussion
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Device-oriented Programs
Pazera Video Converters Suite
Also recommended XMedia Recode: Dead-simple conversion for every device possible. Encoder settings not transparent Hybrid Programs
Custom-oriented Programs
F
Also recommended XVID4PSP: Stable and with even more tweaks than Mediacoder. Impossibly fragmented interface.
Audio-only ProgramsPazera Free Audio Extractor is the audio-only program in the above-mentiond Pazera Video Converters Suite. It supports both video and audio input and output to many formats, and is slightly simpler than some of its sibling programs. Otherwise, it is perfectly identical.
Also recommended Koyote Soft Free mp3 wma Converter: Slightly simpler interface, but clunkier.
Tested and not recommended
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When 
covers most of the same ground, but with a simple text-driven interface. It's really a package of several separate device converters with a common launcher. It supports fewer formats and has no built-in video editor, but can do everything else.
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Related Products and Links
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1.2.0 
Unrestricted Freeware 
NT/2000/XP/Vista/7
This category is maintained by volunteer editor Arithmomaniac. Registered site visitors can contact Arithmomaniac by clicking here.
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Hi! thanks for the review.
I have a problem with Format Factory when converting from RMVB to other formats (usually AVI or WMV). The converted file has continuous freezing, as if it had very poor FPS, a total lack of smoothness in motion. Does someone experiment the same?
Great review thanks - this should be a standard here.
Nice review, feel like to try all of them. I am using the free studio manager by dvdvideosoft that i can download for free. But the converter from dvd to video (AVI format) has audio/video problems. The video is watcable, but its not good enough to watch it on full screen or tv. And the audio is very bad (makes so much noise).
I will try the best on your recomendation and be back to give command again on this forum. Thanks anyway.
I don't understand what is so why you don't recommend WinFF?
"Pazera without the tweaking, Quick Media Converter without the eye candy"
Well, maybe those reasons are why some people like it. Ive used a few times, for simple jobs, and had for the most part had no problems. It's basically a GUI for FFMpeg. By the way, a lot of these converters are either powered by FFMpeg or use parts of FFMpeg.
I'm more of a fan of XMedia Recode for dead-simple conversions - it supports more devices and has slightly more transparency. You are certainly correct in that the distinguishing features are in the GUI, though.
Arithmomaniac
I've read this before but I'm having a hard-time with the German language.
Does anyone know if there's another stable FFMPEG front-end tool with a GUI written in English? I'm mostly interested in doing video conversions at this point.
Third menu bar > sprache > English
I must admit that XMedia Recode is very good for conversions. I have tried many of the converters on this site. I did have problems with XMedia when creating DVD Vob files from an MKV. It made the file to large for the selected DVD 4.7 size media, so then just selected MPEG2 setting, it worked and then loaded it into DVD Flick.
I think it's worth mentioning that for the technically minded, (I'm not one of them)might actually like to use FFMpeg. It's all command line.
Oh, thanks for replying and for not pointing out my spelling and grammatical errors. I shouldn't type things when half awake.
Hi, guys
Do you know about some free software in Windows for converting .vro files (from dvd-vr discs)?
Thanks for your replies.
I've had the same problems. I found that WinFF or Super works pretty well. I mostly converted them to a DVD compliant Mpeg2 format so I could load them into a DVD Authoring Program. I haven't tried VROs in any of the other converters, but I assume some of them might be able to handle it. What format did you want to convert the VROs to anyway?
X2X audio converter should be removed. I just checked the site, and now it has got an unsatisfactory WOT rating... don't know why. You might have to consider other alternatives for audio converter, like MediaCoder Audio Edition, or Any Audio Converter.
Thanks Anupam - I've contacted the editor and asked him to remove it.
Thanks MC.
I've just started using Free Video Converter, which works and is quicker than others I've used. However, iWisoft is still starting IE automatically to check for updates, even though iWisoft's own web site says that the new version of the program has the "Startup connecting to the internet removed". Doesn't seem to be removed at all, and I can't find an option to disable it.
1. My new digital camera takes movies in .mov (QuickTime)format. Would they be smaller on my hard drive if I converted them to .avi, or does it not make a difference?
2. I am familiar with ripping DVDs using IMGBurn (legally, of course) into either ISOs or as files for compression with DVDShrink. If I start keeping movies on my hard drive long-term, can I convert them down to a smaller size, and if so, what? If I do, can I easily convert them back to 'regular' DVD so I can burn and watch them on a normal DVD player later on?
3. Is your top pick safe? Someone said below that it 'phones home'...
Thanks guys.
The phoning home part is not unusual. In fact it's typical of many software groups including most everything from Microsoft :)
Even Mr. Paranoia here (me) has stuff on his PC that would be doing just that if I didn't have my Comodo firewall configured accordingly, including OpenOffice, Java, USB SafelyRemove, VLC and umpteen others.
The other issue raised will I'm sure be investigated thoroughly by the editor for this category but as the weekend is almost upon us please be patient.
Sorry for the day, everybody.
I don't have the security expertise to make such an evaluation, but I just ran it against MSE and it came up clean. It's on enough reputable third-party sites (download.com, softpedia, etc. ) That I'm OK recommending it.
As Arithmomaniac says we have now evaluated iWisoft Free Video Converter as much as it's possible for us to to. Along with many other sites including Softpedia we can't find anything wrong with it. Like all software though, if you are unhappy with how it performs on your computer then by all means use something else. There are plenty of other choices in this category. The same goes for reliance on security program results. If you trust your own then replace what it flags with a different option.
The iWisoft Free Video Converter (videoconverter.exe) scans positive on both VirusTotal and Jotti - VirusBuster detects "Adware.Adrotator.Gen.2". McAfee says this is the trojan "Generic.dx!e!1463bd3dcfbc" (see http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_230415.htm). Combined with the fact that this programme "calls home" to update whenever it starts, this is very suspicious.
I had FormatFactory 2.10 installed but hadn't used it in a little while. Went to convert some files and it advised me an update was available. I (foolishly) ignored WOT's warning and downloaded v. 2.20 from BrotherSoft.
Began the install. First Avira blocked the installation of some sort of EBay adware. Then WinPatrol alerted me to the installation of the Ask toolbar, an updater to the Ask toolbar, and the change of my home page to Ask.com, all of which I blocked. Please note that I was never told (much less asked permission) about any of this by the installer.
Went to uninstall the Ask toolbar from Add/Remove Programs and it refused to uninstall, saying I "already had the Ask toolbar installed" and exited (well, duh, that's the one I was trying to get rid of). Had to get rid of it with Revo Uninstaller.
I hate to say it, because FF is a good program, but because of this completely unethical behavior I think it should not be recommended in any way, shape, or form.
Regards,
Steve
Steve, IMHO you didn't pay attention to the install. FF indeed DOES offer you the option to untick Ebay and Ask crap, although it's done just at or before the very last install screen which I do find unacceptable (it's easy to miss which is why they do it, no doubt.)
FWIW I myself just uninstalled 2.20 because it's unstable and crashed on a fairly standard conversion I needed. Reverted to 2.15 and voila.
Just use Revo to remove everything, reinstall 2.15 as per comments above and you should be fine.
Chris,
Well, I went back and re-downloaded and installed FF 2.20 in a virtual machine and lo and behold, you're right! I'm usually pretty vigilant about such things -- must have had a momentary loss of concentration. But they do indeed give you a chance to opt out. I stand corrected.
So I'll modify my comment to a caution: pay attention when installing!
Regards,
Steve
Site of MediaCoder has changed. I had been getting 404 error on their earlier webpage which they hosted at SourceForge.
This is the current site of MediaCoder : http://www.mediacoderhq.com/
Nice change in the format of the article. Its organized in a better way now. Keep up the good work :).
Just started using Koyote. It works well as a converter, but it's also nice as a simple video editor/selector: just select the same format for your output as the original file (eg, .avi), select the section of video you want in the preview window, "convert" it, and Koyote will give you a new video file with only the section you selected. The file will have the same name as the original, so of course you'll probably want the output directory to be different from the input directory unless you want to overwrite the original. CAUTION: Like another user said, Koyote installed the Yahoo toolbar in Firefox even though I told it not to during installation, and I had to remove the toolbar manually. The program works, but to some extent it's sneakware.
A follow-up: Koyote's wording about the toolbar installation is IMO deliberately confusing, so that it's all too easy to install the thing when you don't want to. I think that's what happened above.
Koyote and Format Factory are listed on ffmeg's wall of shame for license violations.
link:
http://ffmpeg.org/shame.html
Sorry, I ment to say Hall Of Shame.
Mediacoder doesn't work for me. I have Windows XP Professional 32 bit and every time it starts transcoding a URL from Youtube it always shows me Error Code 17.
Hello,
My boyfriend has an Ipod and we want to be able to play the music on our computer.
That's all :-)
What would be the easiest way to rip this?
Regards,
Angeline
Use iDump to transfer iPod content to computer :). Available here :
http://www.codershole.com/idump.php?id=09a3594188325376f812c5aa913471dd
A cr4ppy rewrite of the article... sh4me on you :P
So says someone who sits in the sidelines and doesn't contribute anything positive!
Gizmo staff do an awesome job. How about supporting them instead of just whining?
Cheers,
Paul.
Well, I just went to install Koyote Soft Free Video Converter. Watch out, it wanted to install a Yahoo toolbar in Firefox, and when I fired it up, WinPatrol started complaining.... not impressed.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned XviD4PSP. It's a very good video transcoding/conversion tool with several video and audio presets and many configurable options, and has a clean and fairly intuitive interface. Despite the name it can encode to a variety of codecs and containers, including MKV for HD video files.
It would be nice of you had just one Mac option. Know any good ones off the top of your head?
MPEG_Streamclip has a mac version, in fact all recent development seems to be for the mac.
One more suggestion has been there on the forum for Iwisoft Video Converter. I used it... seems good. Here is the forum link :
http://www.techsupportalert.com/freeware-forum/software-suggestions/2396...
Anupam
I downloaded and installed the new version of Quick Media Converter yesterday. I did not find it to be good. The expert mode is REALLY for experts... there are no suggestions... no drop-down boxes to help choose the different video attributes... just plain empty boxes for you to fill in.
The interface is not that good... and when you change it to expert mode, you cannot figure out anything :O.
The easy mode looked OK, but when I tried to convert a DAT file to mpg, which I have converted successfully with all other converters, QMC was not able to do it, and threw an error.
I uninstalled and deleted QMC... its out of my PC for good :D.
Anupam
Wow, the review was updated so soon. Good work :). I was surprised to see Koyote Video Converter as the top choice. I didn't think it would replace FormatFactory.
One thing about Koyote Video Converter... when I installed and ran it... PC Tools Firewall says its trying to act as server and accept incoming connections. If I block it, the program throws the usual windows error, and does not run. I find that behavior very odd and suspicious. Why would a program want to act as server... and would not run if that is blocked.
I had more points to say, but I will post them later on... I was not able to do the conversion work I had to do, since few days.
I found Oxelon Converter to be nice too, but yes as you mention, tweaks are less, and no device support. Device support in converters is not a problem I think, because separate converters for devices are available.
I came across another new converter today : MediaCope. Saw it on FreewareFiles. It has audio/video player, audio/video converter, audio/video cutter, image resizer/cutter, internet tools and slideshow. Impressive. Will try it soon.
Quick Media Converter has a new version 4.0.0.0.
More later. Keep up the good work :). Thanks for a great review.
Edit : Just saw the size of new version of Quick Media Converter. Its whopping 44.91 MB :O. I am having second thoughts about downloading it :D.
Anupam
I deal with AV. It defeats 50% of the my purpose if Koyote converts video only. FF is still my choice for AV conversion. Not sure about others though.
I agree with you. FormatFactory is my choice too. It offers so many conversions... audio, video, images, and can even rip DVDs too. I also found it to be useful both for average, and experienced users.
Anupam
Thanks for the MediaCope and Koyote tips. I'll have revised reviews soon.
A clarification...Koyote does AV conversion. It just does not convert from or to MP3, AAC, etc. They have a seperate converter for that, which I need to review also.
Arithmomaniac
Very welcome :).
I checked Koyote Video Converter today. It does not do audio conversion... only videos. It can extract audio from the video file, and convert it to another format though. But it does not accept audio file as an input, and convert it to another audio format.
I tried MediaCope today too. It requires .NET framework SP1... and I think that will be a disadvantage for the product, as many users do not like to install .NET frameworks unnecessarily... including myself.
I however tested it on my cousin's PC, after installing .NET 2.0 SP2.
The program looks good, and the interface is different. But the video conversion part was very unsatisfactory... even useless in my opinion. The FPS were 30 and 24, which are not exact. 29.97 is for NTSC and 25 for PAL. Further, even the display resolution choices are not standard. Quite disappointing. I wouldn't want to convert my videos with MediaCope, unless they offer some standard attributes.
I haven't checked on the other features... so can't say about that. But, the main was the video conversion, and it was disappointing.
I checked out the audio converter though, and noticed that it allows conversion to AC3 too, a feature which I have not seen in another audio converters.
Anupam
Name of this article is "Best Free Audio / Video Format Conversion Program" and Gizmo's top pick doesn't support audio conversion at all? Also it doesn't work on my system because I don't have installed Microsoft .NET Framework.
If you want similar audio conversion, try X2X (which I'll co-nominate in a future edit).
As for .NET, just get it. I used to hate it, but it's basically a key part of programming for Windows now.
Arithmomaniac
Based on the recommendations here I have tried both Formatfactory and Mediacoder. I wanted to convert a batch of wmv's to avi (xvid)as a test, with specific bitrates, custom resizing, and audio to mp3. Neither one worked satisfactorily.
Formatfactory does not allow custom resizing, nor bitrate settings above 2400 (or something like that).
Mediacoder produced avi's that were not recognised by Virtualdub as proper avi files, despite the fact that it seemed to have used XVID to do the encoding (according to MediaInfo).
Neither seem to have advanced filtering either (gamma, colour, noise, blocking, smoothing etc).
It is possible that both can do what I want, but the configuration options to do so were not easily detectable.
I have been using Super for several years and have had no problem with its interface, and at least it reliably works to give me what I want. It looks like I have to stay with Super + Virtualdub.
There is so much to read here, and I have one basic question...this coming from a newbie: I just want to burn a movie I downloaded to a dvd+r. It is a mp4 file. I use win. media player (pc, win 7) & it doesn't support mp4 or avi, which I also need. Is there a free program out there that would do this? Nothing fancy...simple simple simple.
Came across more media converters :
Aura Video Converter
Actusoft Video Converter
X2X Free Audio Converter
Anupam
I couldn't find Actusoft's home page.
Aura is another Any knockoff.
I'll have X2X tested by next week.
The home page is www.actusoft.com
Anyways, I had tried to rip a DVD with Actusoft, and it failed terribly. Even on selecting multiple titles, it will just rip one, and that too on individual selection. After conversion, the output file was just 4kb. Needless to say, I uninstalled the software without looking at other features.
I tried 2 products by X2X ... one was VideoAudio Merger... I tried merging audio files, and it worked well.
The other one was Video Flip and Rotate. That worked well too.
So, I think the audio converter could be worth looking at.
Anupam
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