Best Free Audio-Video Format Conversion Program

Read this article in Spanish

Introduction

There are many different audio and video formats out there, and most devices (such as iPhone, iPad, Android phones, etc.) and programs (such as Windows Media Player) are only compatible with a few specific formats. An AVI or WMV movie will not play on an iPhone, for example, without being converted into an MP4 file first.

There are quite a few programs that will do this for free, with more popping up all the time. They tend to fall into a few general categories:

To gain control over basic settings (such as framerate, frame size and bitrate) and experience a quick conversion where most guesswork is done for you, try our General Converter Picks.
To convert without fiddling with any settings, using as few clicks as possible, try our Device-Specific Picks, especially suited to conversions for a portable device.
To have complete control over every detail of conversion and fine-tune your output using settings for advanced users, look at our Custom-Oriented Picks.
To convert audio files with more audio-specific functionality, then try our Audio-Only Picks.

While some are better than others overall, which one is best for you will depend on what sort of program you need.

General Converter Picks

Freemake Video Converter

A stable, flexible and powerful video converter

Our Rating:

Gizmo's Freeware editor award for the best product in its class!

License: Free

Great interface, very flexible, support for almost every type of conversion, easy to use.

Bundled toolbar (you can opt out, but it's a multi-click process), bundled OpenCandy.

Read full review...

Format Factory

An excellent choice with presets for conversion and a DVD ripper

Our Rating:

License: Free

Stable with many device presets. Supports all video file formats. Rips DVD's & Music CD's. Very powerful software.

Installer is bundled with a toolbar (you are able to opt out), interface is non-linear and somewhat confusing.

Read full review...

Also recommended:

YouTube Downloader HD: This program is a gem in the world of YouTube ripping. It allows you to copy/paste a YouTube link, choose your video quality, and download it to your computer for future viewing. In the latest version, you can now choose to have it automatically convert the .FLV file to an iPod/iPhone compatible .MP4 file, or an XViD .AVI for playback on many devices.

Device-Specific Picks

Pazera Free Audio Video Pack

A collection of portable audio and video converters

Our Rating:

License: Free

Excellent presets, easy to use, custom profiles.

Looks intimidating, separate programs for each output type, no advanced tweaks. Contains unwanted bundled components. Take care to avoid these during the install process.

Read full review...

Miro Video Converter

A multimedia converter with a dozen device presets

Our Rating:

License: Free (Open source)

Brutally easy-to-use device conversion.

Only one file at a time, no profile or generic tweaking, only MP4.

Read full review...

Also recommended:

Handbrake: A long-time favorite of mine, when I need to convert from just about any format to a nice, no-nonsense iPod/iPhone compatible video (encoded in H.264). It has a queue, and supports multiple Apple presets including Apple TV.
WinX Video Converter: More up-to-date than iWisoft. Support converting videos to 100+ devices including newest iPhone 6/Plus, S5, HTC, PS4 with many preset profiles. Adjustable video audio parameters. Clean and simple. Please note though on the top there's YouTube URL entry, it is just an upgrading recommendation which can be skipped easily. This freeware doesn't support converting YouTube videos.

Custom-Oriented Picks

FFCoder

An audio-video converter with highly advanced configurations and rendering settings

Our Rating:

License: Free

Solid preset list, highly advanced tweaks, sleek interface.

Dependencies, no installer.

Read full review...

Also recommended:

XVID4PSP: Supports very many tweaks. Impossibly fragmented interface. Solid AviSynth support.
MediaCoder: Great for tech obsessive because of the tons of customizable features to convert from and to video audio formats. Support MP4, AVI, MP3, WMA, WAV, etc. and allow to adjust parameters. But if you're not familiar with the jargon and just want a hassle-free, simple-to-use free video converter, you may turn to others.

Audio-Only Picks

Pazera Free Audio Extractor is the audio-only program in the above-mentioned Pazera Free Audio Video Pack. It supports both video and audio input and output to many audio formats, and is slightly simpler than some of its sibling programs. Otherwise, it is perfectly identical.

Notes: Tested and not recommended:

MPEG Streamclip: very powerful for MP4, but single-file, ugly/laggy, has dependencies
Avidemux: great video editor, lousy video converter

Editor

This software category is in need of an editor. If you would like to give something back to the freeware community by taking it over, check out this page for more details. You can then contact us from that page or by clicking here.

Back to the top of the article

Please rate this article:

Comments

OK, that makes sense! :)

Freemake worked fine for a quality video (720p), but when i tried an FLV 640x480 with mono audio, it multiplied the size by 5, even when using to FLV Same as Source.

All i want is to cut out unwanted parts and make the file as small as possible while keeping the exact same quality.

Video to Video converter is a software for converting between various video and audio formats:

http://www.videotovideo.org/

Thanks, Panzer. I've actually tested this freeware but sadly I decided not to recommend. It supports plenty of video audio formats, but the device profiles are to some extent not up-to-date. And I think the profiles are also not that well organized, users may feel not easy to find out a certain one. Regarding the editing feature, it is also very basic compared with other converters.

Thanks the same for your recommendation.

Already suggested in comments below.

try supersimple video converter
light weight , and really simple to use

Thanks, anuragdoc. I will take it into consideration. If it's good enouth, I'll include it in the list.

I've spent a whole day to test the programs listed in this article and removed quite many due to various reasons. Some were bundled with adware, some were not powerful enough nowadays (less profiles, less supported formats, etc.), some were slow or of large sizes, and so on. Hope you'll like my hard work. :p

I've removed iWisoft Free Video Converter from General Converter Picks section to Tested and not recommended section. That is because:

1. It has stopped upgrading since the end of 2010.

2. The device profiles in the current version v1.2 are too old, you can't find the latest devices. I think it won't meet most of our needs, right?

But for those who like this free video coverter, you can still keep it and convert videos to your up-to-date devices.

Note that you need to manually adjust the output settings for your devices for better viewing experience.

Good morning you all.
Just received a note from "FileHippo.com Update News" as follows:
Quote
Video to Video Converter is a great free tool for converting your video content
unquote
It is a freeware and I wonder what is wrong with this converter that it is not on your list of recommended converters.

Thanks arieshfman for your suggestion. I will download and test it myself and may include it in the review list if it's good enough.

I wonder if iWisoft has been abandoned because it hasn't been updated for years now ?

Thanks for commenting here, Sir Winston. I also have no idea about this. But I think for such long-time-no-updating programs, I may try to replace them bit by bit. If you're looking for a video converter, you can have a look at other programs. :)

Hi, so glad to see you here. I'm Arata, the new editor of this Best Free Audio Video Format Conversion Program category. I will go on working with this review and bringing you the best freeware for video audio converting. If you have any ideas or suggests, please also do not hesitate to share here. :)

After using Freemake for quite some time,and being pleased with the results, I finally consented to an update that they had been nag screening about for months. Big Mistake. Along with the update came a vicious piece of malware/adware
called "Express Find". It caused a black rectangle to appear at the bottom center of my (FF) browser screen which protruded about 2" from bottom and about 4"wide. There was an "X" in upper right hand corner but it did not close the rectangle. When clicked it redirected my browser to some very shabby websites. (per WOT) . Got rid of it by running avast scan which picked it up and deleted it. Beware

Update:

Just ran an MBAM scan. It found and quarantined 15 items classified as "PUP's" all connected to "Express Find" although previous to this scan browser appeared to be running cleanly.

In my opinion, the best video conversion program for most tasks is VLC, it's free, robust, and not full of malware like many of the free programs out there. It does most every format.

Thanks for the videoconverter analysing and rating, it's great! I tried two versions of Freemake Video Converter 4.1.5.4 and then 4.1.3 to convert mov to avi, dvd to avi, mpeg2 to avi. Freemake Video Converter 4.1.5.4 worked great with Win7-64, but crashed then and again when I tried to merge up to hundred mpeg2 files even without converting. Once I had luck to merge 90 mpeg2 with primary size 2.36 Gb. But only once. So, then I tried older version Freemake Video Converter 4.1.3 and it works well. Only problem was the bounded soft like new browser or toolbars. So, I needed to unistall some of them and run Ccleaner to clean my registry. Freemake Video Converter is great for your handycam, pretty fast and easiest, completely automatic, but for torrent movies converting I prefer XviD4PSP5 - better adapting quality, wide settings, choosing audio streams, etc. Thanks again!

Shouldn't this list be updated? It's been more than a year and also SUPER seems to be the only software that can work with the vp9 codec, but installing it makes my antivirus go crazy.

This review currently has no editor so there will not be any substantial updates to it until someone volunteers to take it over. MC - Site Manager.

I have tried just about all of the converters that is availiable I believe. I have stuck with [edited] for Dvds. I have never had a single problem out of it and I have problem converted a couple hundred movies. Plus it supports all formats, whereas some of the others do not. For audio I use XmediaRecode, and have not had a problem out of it. FF should never have been built. Handbrake does ok once you figure it, but still faults at times and has actually caused me to lose parts of a movie file.

[Moderator's note: Edited out mention of commercial software.]

Please be aware that Emsisoft Antimalware showed warnings while I've been installing Freemake Video Converter.

The most critical of them are:
-keylogger acticity;
-getting the listing of "My documents folder";
-windows service injection attempt;
-Opencandy installation attempt.

Thank you. We already highlight the bundled components in the Freemake product details. MC - Site Manager.

Combine an FFmpeg powered back-end with VLC rendered previews, then add in file size estimation, a gorgeous user interface and make it entirely free. That is Adapter - the ultimate converter app for Mac and PC: http://www.macroplant.com/adapter/

I have tried many versions of Freemake and they all crash while loading MPEG2(ripped DVD using DVD Shrink) files (4-5 files around 4GB total). I've tried it on two different Windows 7 machines. Both crash. Five stars? Have not tried any of the older versions to see if that solves the issue.
My personal preference is MediaCoder. You must know a little about video formats and should invest some time on the website's Tips and Guides blog.

I've been using Format Factory for several years and recently updated the software. During installation I was given the option to install the Ask toolbar, which I UNchecked. Despite UNchecking the option, FF installed the insidious toolbar anyway. For some reason, uninstalling the Ask toolbar also uninstalled all my Firefox extensions. Despite having a FF backup, it took me 3 hours to restore all my customizations. Format Factory's brute force installation of the Ask toolbar is cheap and dishonest. I'll never use Format Factory again.

I just tried using this tool: Video to Video Converter http://www.videotovideo.org/

Looks like it belongs on this list.

Video Converter - Introduction

This is a free video converter. Video to Video converter is a software for converting between various video and audio formats. Today there are a lot of different video and audio formats, different devices support various video formats, therefore in order to watch video and audio material on different devices you need to convert it, which means to adjust it to the device being used.

Video converter which we present is feature-rich and allows you to convert almost all existing formats. It is possible to convert video and audio files to DivX or XviD format for watching movies on TV, HD formats for LCD, Plasma TVs, almost all types of mobile phones, android, iPhone, iPod, iPad, to prepare videos for the internet, conversion/authoring of video DVD formats, QuickTime, convert for uploading to YouTube, various rare and specific codecs etc.

XMedia Recode and XviD4PSP are the best among the ones I've used :D

My personal top pick is Mediacoder. It has an annoying nag screen when you start it up, but aside from that, it's perfect. Any format to any format, clear interface, full range of options (container, video stream, audio stream with all their tweaks and settings), GPU acceleration where possible, native interface (unlike iWisoft or Freemake for example with their lame custom UI), batch jobs, etc.

Edit: aaaand it turns out you can disable the nag screen, so now Mediacoder has lots of upsides and no downsides at all :3

What makes Mediacoder bettern than Freemake?

Tried to download Pazera audio converter / extractor 3 times yesterday and once today, and was never able to do it. I was immediately taken to a page where I could download a free video converter, but that was not what I wanted. On the off chance that the video converter might have the audio converter embedded in it, I installed it, but it did not.

What is the story here ? I am looking for a simple freeware program to convert wav or wma files to varying bitrate mp3 files. Used to use Musicmatch Jukebox, but that is no longer in existence.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Bobsco60

Gizmo's Freeware

Main menu

Best Free Audio-Video Format Conversion Program

Introduction