Usually for different types of media conversions, we have separate programs installed: one for video format conversions, one for audio format conversions, and one for image format conversions. With DVDVideoSoft’s Free Studio, you can get a single program for all your media type conversions.

Free Studio is a freeware for Windows that supports an impressive range of video formats as well as audio and image formats. Find our comprehensive coverage of this remarkable freeware below and see why you should be using it.

Download and Installation

Free Studio runs on Windows XP, Vista, and 7. In order to get the program, you will need to download its setup file which is in the EXE format and about 60MB large. That seemingly large setup size completely justifies itself once the program’s features are explored and understood. In addition to the features, which we highlight in the following paragraphs, the program supports multiple languages. A total of 12 languages are supported including Dutch, English, Spanish, French, and Italian.

The multi-language support certainly helps deliver features to a wider audience unlike most media conversion freeware that targets only English-speaking computer users.

User-Interface

When you run the program for the first time, this is the type of picture you will see:

The big bright buttons let you enter different categories of media tools. A clicking sound can be heard as you place the mouse pointer over these buttons. The sound nicely adds to the overall feel of the program.

In case you want to change the default language without reinstalling the program, you can do so from the top-right.

Overall, the interface maintains a fresh look without ever tiring its user. If we were to grade it, the interface would get an ‘A’.

Let us now move on to the type of media tools offered by Free Studio.

Image Tools

Using the “Photo & Images” button from the main window of the program, you can enter the images portal of Free Studio. Here you will see an impressive list of image tools you can use.

Starting from the top of the list, you can use these tools to:

• Convert the format of images and resize them
• Convert videos to individual JPG images
• Create 3D photographs
• Record a portion of your screen to create a screencast

Thus not only do you get handy image tools, but you can also record screencasts thereby eliminating the need of an extra application for the purpose.

Audio Tools

From the main window, the “MP3 & Audio” button lets you access the program’s audio tools.

The audio tools let you perform the following functions:

• Convert audio files between various formats
• Edit audio files
• Extract audio from videos
• Burn audio to an optical disc either as an audio CD or as an MP3 disc

Like the image tools, the audio tools save you the need to have a bunch of other programs installed. The audio tools section of Free Studio will replace your current software for audio format conversions, audio editing, and audio extraction from video.

Video Tools

Free Studio offers an impressive array of video tools. These tools are spread out into 5 categories that are visible in the program’s main window. The first category is “YouTube” and its tools can be seen in the following image:

The YouTube tools let you download videos from YouTube and directly convert their file format thereby effectively merging the download and conversion steps. The application even lets you upload videos to YouTube from its interface.

The second set of video tools is categorized as “CD, DVD, BD.” The tools included under this category can be seen in the following image:

These tools are basically disc-writing tools. In other words, these tools let you burn videos to a video CD, a DVD, or a BluRay disc after passing the video through the appropriate file conversions.

The third category of video tools is “DVD & Video.” See the following image for the list of tools it contains:

As you can see in the image, this category offers video tools that you will probably be using the most. From video editing to video format conversion, tools in this category perform all those functions.

The “Mobiles” category of video tools will let you convert videos for specific devices. These will come in handy when you do not know which video formats your devices can handle. The following image is what tools in this category look like:

The last category of video tools is “Apple Devices.” The function of this category is the same as “Mobile” with video tools for each Apple device labeled separately.

Usage

Method of usage of all tools offered by Free Studio is nearly the same. Once you click on a tool in one of the abovementioned categories, you will encounter a window similar to the image below:

The top section is where you specify the input file. You can specify multiple files in case of batch conversions. Underneath you specify the output folder path and details of the output format. When your preferences are set, you click on the “Convert” button to initiate the process.

Conclusion

Take a look at your installed programs. As we pointed out earlier, you will notice you have multiple applications installed for nearly all the functions that are being offered by Free Studio. Replacing all those applications by a single program will not only be convenient but also significantly free up your disk space. With the advantages it offers, Free Studio is a must-have application for all computer users.

DVDVideoSoft’s Free Studio.

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iSkysoft’s iMedia Converter is one of the few video converter that combines DVD ripping and video converting into one software. If you have a favorite DVD that you want to convert to iPhone compatible format, instead of using separate software to rip the DVD and convert the video, you can now do them in one step, with one software.

iMedia converter supports audio/video files of various formats and is able to convert them for devices such as iPod Touch 4, iPod Nano, iPhone, Apple TV, Zune, PSP, HTC and other portable devices.

When you first start the application, it will prompt you to drag your video file to the main panel. You can also load file from the DVD-ROM and ISO file.

Once you have added the video, you can choose the device/format that you want to convert to. After you have done the selection, all you have to do is to click the “Convert” button and it will do its job.

Other than the default conversion feature, iMedia converter also comes with an “Editing” tool where you can crop, add effects, watermark and add subtitles to the track before conversion.

Another feature about iMedia converter is the ability to combine several audio/video files into one single file. All you have to do is to load up all the videos that you want to combine, drag to reorder them, tick the “MERGE INTO ONE FILE” box and click the Convert button. As simple as that.

Other features include:

• Rip DVDs to popular video formats
• Optimized Presets for Video Players
• Convert Videos to various formats: MP4, MP4 AVC, M4V, AVI, WMV, MOV,etc. and HD videos like HD MKV, HD WMV, AVCHD(MTS, M2TS), etc.
• Remove DRM Protections
• Extract audio from DVD or Video
• Add Subtitle
• DVD & Video Clip: Split video or audio into several parts and you can just convert or join the specific segments you want. You can trim your favorite lines or music and extract MP3 sound track to create stylish ringtones for your phone.
• Remove Unwanted Scenes
• DRM targeted

Free Giveaway

iSkySoft has kindly offered their best product: iMedia Converter for free public download during the period 23rd – 27th Dec 2010. You just have to visit this site to grab this great software.

On top of that, for Make Tech Easier readers only, if you share this post around, you get to win a copy of the DVD Creator For Mac software. Together with the iMedia converter, this will be the perfect combination for all your video needs. We have 10 licenses to give away.

To participate in this free giveaway, follow the steps below:

Step 1

Be our Facebook fan or follow us in Twitter :

(If you have already done this, skip to step 2)

STEP 2

Fill up the form below. This is to make sure that we can contact you when you win the license. We promise that we won’t spam you.

Update: This free giveaway contest is now closed.

STEP 3
Share this post either in Facebook or Twitter, or leave a comment below.

This giveaway begins now and ends Wednesday, 27th December at 2359hrs Eastern Time. The winners will be selected at random and announced via email.

Share and enjoy!

More giveaway from iSkySoft: http://www.iskysoft.com/software-giveaway.html

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How I wish that there is only one unified video format in the whole world and all the media players support that particular format. In reality, this is not the case. With so many mobile devices out there each supporting different audio/video format, it can be a great hassle finding out which format is suitable for which device. Just imagine the time saved from converting your .avi movie to iPhone compatible .mp4 format.

This is where Danuisoft Video Converter Ultimate (DVCU) comes in. DVCU does not unifies the video format, but it makes your video conversion a much simpler task, and I really mean it when I say “a much simpler task”. The software is not called “Video Converter Ultimate” for nothing. In fact, this feature-packed software is really the only video converter you need.

Before you are too hype up and preparing to take out your credit card to purchase the software, I’ve got good news for you. We are giving away 5 full licenses (worth $59.95 each) to Make Tech Easier readers this week!

Read on for the full review.

Multiple formats

There are many features that make Daniusoft Video Converter Ultimate stands out from the rest and one of them is the huge list of video/audio formats that it supports. Ranging from avi, mp4, wmv, rmvb, mkv, h264 to mp3, ogg, wav, 3gp, flac and many more.

On the main screen, you just have to drag and drop the videos to the main pane, then click the Start button (on the bottom right) to start the conversion. DVCU will then take care of the rest.

Alternatively, you can manually add the video/audio files  or get it to read DVD from your DVD drive and rip it to your desired video/audio format.

Last but not least, you can also add the URL of a video file, get it to download the videos (from Youtube or any other video sites) and add them to the main pane.

Output Settings

In the Output settings, you can specify the file format to convert your video to, or simply pick the model of the handset/mobile device that you are using and DVCU will automatically convert the video to the desired formats.

The list of mobile devices supported by DVCU is pretty comprehensive, ranging from most of the Android models to iPhone, iPod Touch (and all other iDevices) and some of the lesser known mp3/video players. There are also choices to convert to HD movies or videos meant to be uploaded to YouTube/Facebook. If none of the options suit you, you can even specify your own output setting, including the frame rate, bit rate and encoder.

Removal of DRM content

One solution that a lot of people are always searching for is “how to remove DRM from your video/audio”. A good thing is, DVCU comes with a DRM removal feature that can remove the DRM license from the files, regardless it is 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.

Editing of video/audio

A video converter software won’t be complete if it doesn’t come with any video editing feature. In DVCU, you get video editing features like trimming, cropping or even add video effects.

Other Features

Some other features found in DVCU include:

• Copy to devices: Once you have downloaded a video, or finished converting a file, you can get it to copy to an attached mobile device.
• Performance throttle: You can specify to use 1/2 CPU core to process the conversion. It can also make use of multi-thread technology to improve the conversion time.
• Merge multiple files: Able to merge multiple files into one.

Free Giveaway

Here’s what you need to do to win the full license:

Update: This contest has ended. The winners will be announced shortly.

This giveaway begins now and ends Thursday, 15th July at 2359hrs Eastern Time. The winners will be selected at random and announced via email.

Spread the word to your friends and have fun!

Thanks to Daniusoft for sponsoring this giveaway event.

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Features of Free FLV Convertor

Apart from converting FLV videos into other formats, Free FLV convertor has some more features. You can download FLV videos from the popular video sharing sites such as Youtube, Google video, Dailymotion, Metacafe using this utility. The application can also convert FLV videos into AVI, iPod and MPEG formats.If you have an iPhone and want to convert the FLV videos into iPhone or 3GP formats, Free FLV convertor can do that in minutes too. What more? You can even extract only the audio from a FLV video and save it as MP3.

On the other hand, if you want to convert videos from other formats into FLV, this convertor can also do that. You can convert videos with MPEG, DiVx, Xvid, DVD and AVI formats into FLV.

When you run the program for the first time, you will be prompted to choose the language.

Now there will be lot of options to choose from. Let’s look at each option one by one.

Search for Videos

You can search for videos using the search feature built in the application. Just type in some words and the utility will search the following list video sharing sites (Youtube, Dailymotion, Google Video, Metacafe, Megavideo or Yahoo) for your video. The videos matching your search terms are shown in the right hand pane of the application.

Select any video from the search results and you can play it right inside the application. There is no need to open any browser. You can even download he video in your computer. This solves the problem of switching to multiple video sharing sites to look for your video. It also saves you the effort to download and install some browser extension to download the video. Free FLV Converter does the job well, and most importantly it’s way much faster.

Convert FLV videos into AVI

1. To convert an FLV video to AVI, switch to the “Conversion to FLV” tab. A window will open to ask you to browse to the FLV video that you want to convert. Click the Browse button and select the FLV video.

Next, just choose the location you want to save the converted file and click the “Convert” button. The application will convert the video into AVI format.

Convert a Video into FLV format

You can also convert a regular video into FLV format using this application. Open the program and select “Conversion to FLV” button. In a similar way, just browse to the video that you want to convert and choose the output location.

Conclusion

Free FLV convertor is an all in one tool for a lot of tasks. It can search for videos from the best video sharing sites, lets you preview and download them and you can also download a list of videos by entering a simple text file containing all the video URLs. It lets you convert videos from FLV to other formats and also from other formats to FLV. Have you tried Free FLV convertor yet ? Do you use any other tool for the same job? Do let us know through a comment.

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From time to time, we collaborate with various software developers to provide free download for our readers. This time round, the latest software available for free download is WinX HD Video Converter (orignially $39.95).

WinX HD Video Converter is a professional video converter specially designed for HD video conversion. It allows you to effortlessly convert HD videos mutually with no loss of image and sound quality, like MTS, M2TS, TS, HD MP4, MKV, HD WMV, and HD MOV, etc. Besides, it also lets you convert between HD videos and regular AVI, MP4, MOV, WMV, etc.

The software itself is very easy to use. There is almost no need to fiddle with any of the technicalities, unless you choose to.

When you first run the software, it will prompt you to Add file from your video folder.

There isn’t really much for you to do. All you need to do is to

1. Add video file

2. Choose the format that you want to convert to.

3. Change the settings (optional). The default setting is good enough for most users.

4. Click on the Start button to start the conversion.

As the conversion could take a long time, there is also an option “Shut down computer when conversion completed” which can be very useful when converting a big file.

At the moment, the format that it supported includes HD-AVI, HD-WMV, HD-AVC, HD-MP4, HD-MOV, HD-MPEG, HD-TS, HD-Youtube and AAC (audio).

In case you have a big video file and only wish to convert a portion of it, WinX HD Video Converter also allows you to specify the start and end time of the video.

All in all, a simple and easy to use software with plenty of useful features.

WinX HD Video Converter is available for free download till 16 Dec 2009. You can grab this great software here.

Don’t forget to subscribe to MakeTechEasier RSS feed or email to get the latest software update from us.

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• Mobile Media Converter: A Cross-platform No-Brainer Media Converter

The Mobile Media Converter (MMC) is a free video and audio converter for converting between popular desktop media formats like MP3, Windows Media Audio (wma), Ogg Vorbis Audio (ogg), Wave Audio (wav), MPEG video, AVI, Windows Media Video (wmv), Flash Video (flv), QuickTime Video (mov) and commonly used mobile devices/phones formats like AMR audio (amr) and 3GP video. iPod/iPhone and PSP compatible MP4 video are also supported.

Simple UI, great functionality

One thing that I like about MMC is that it is simple in design and does not contain any extra stuffs to misled its users. Regardless you are using Windows, Linux or Mac, you will get the same interface throughout. There is a +/- button for you to add/remove file(s), a button to select the output destination, a dropdown bar to select the output format and a Convert button to start the conversion. That’s it.

Its simple design is by no mean an indication of a lack of functionality. On the contrast, it is packed with plenty of features that you will find it useful.

Supports a variety of media formats

Be it video or audio formats, MMC has covered it all. It is able to convert between the commonly used formats, such as OGG, MP3, WMA, WMV, MP4 WAV, AVI etc. Unless you are using a device that required a special codec, MMC should have you covered.

Batch conversion

MMC supports batch conversion of videos/audios. Simply add a bunch of videos/songs to the application and it will batch convert them and save them all in the same folder.

Advance setting

Most of the time, you won’t have need for this, but if you are keen to change the output bitrate, codec, channel, size etc, then this is the place to go to.

Youtube downloader

We have previously covered several Youtube downloader desktop apps. Here’s another one to add to your collection.

The best part about this is that after downloading the Youtube video, you can convert it to the format that you want, or just to extract the mp3 track in the video. This is great if you just want to get the music out of the video.

Trim/crop

If you think that is all, then you are wrong. MMC also allows you to trim/crop your video before converting. One thing though, this functionality is hidden on its interface and you have to perform extra steps to edit the video.

On the Video entry, right click your mouse. You should now see the options to Trim/Crop. The Trim function is for you to determine the start and end length of the converted video while the Crop feature allows you to change the aspect ratio of the video.

Suggestions for Improvement

One thing that I found lacking is the ability to stop the operation once the conversion start. While testing this out, I accidentally clicked the Convert button and the conversion starts without showing a prompt. Neither does it provide a Cancel button for me to stop the operation. I have two choices: wait for 30 minutes for the conversion to complete or to kill the application completely. I choose the latter. It will be great if it stop the operation in mid-way.

Another thing that is lacking is the support for subtitle files. For converting movie to iPhone format, until it supports adding of subtitle files to the video, I will still stick with my XviD4PSP . Other than that, this is one of the best media converter that I have come across so far.

What do you think?

Image credit: Houkwing

Mobile Media Converter

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• 5 Powerful Video Converters For Mac That You Can Use For Free

For Mac, there are several converter software that you can use to convert videos. Some of them are powerful, but come with a hefty price tag, while some are free, but is rather limited in functionality. If you are looking for a video converter that is both free and powerful (or useful), here are 5 of them that you can consider.

1) Handbrake

Handbrake initially started off as a DVD ripper. With the launch of the 0.9.3 version, it is now a full-fledged video converter coupled with the usual simple, easy to use interface and powerful features.

The advantages of using Handbrake is that most of the settings are already preset for you. What you need to do is just load the video file, choose the format that you want (or the device that you want to convert for) and click Start to start the encoding. Handbrake will take care of the rest.

Handbrake uses the libavcodec and libavformat library from ffmpeg, so it’s pretty much able to support most of the video formats out there.

2) ffmpegx

ffmpegx uses more than 20 powerful Unix open-source video and audio processing tools, including ffmpeg, mpeg-2 encoder and mpeg-4 encoder, so it’s not surprising to see that it can supports almost a great tons of video formats.

Video/audio formats supported by ffmpegx include MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DIVX, XviD, non-encrypted VOB and VIDEO_TS, Quicktime .MOV, .DV, .WAV, Real Audio, Real Video, MP3, AAC and many more. Other than this, it also supports subtitles files in VobSub, SubRip, MicroDVD, SubViewer, Sami, VPlayer, RT, SSA, AQTitle, JACOsub and MPsubt formats. You could even edit the fonts of your subtitles.

Before you install ffmpegx, you have to first download the mencoder and mplayer binaries and the mpeg2enc binary. These binaries are what the software is based on and they are not included in the default package.

ffmpegx is a shareware and it costs $15 to register. However, the trial version is fully-functional (except for the SVCD>DVD and DVD>DVD4GB tools) and is not time-limited. If you have used and really like this software, do support the developer and his hard work by registering for a license code.

3) MPEG Streamclip

MPEG Streamclip is a video converter coupled with simple video editing feature. You can cut, trim and join movies and convert them between muxed/demuxed formats. You can even download videos from YouTube and Google videos and convert them on-the-fly.

MPEG Streamclip is also a video player. You can use it to playback video files and transport streams or export them to QuickTime, AVI, DV and MPEG-4 files so you can easily import them in DVD authoring tool.

4) Kigo Video Converter

Kigo video converter is one of my favorite video converter for the reason that it is able to encode videos at a fast speed. A video that took 45 mins to encode only takes less than 30 mins in Kigo. Initially, I thought that the quality will suffered with a faster encoding speed, but I was quite surprised to see that the video quality is preserved and not affected by the speed (maybe there is, but I can”t distinguish it).

Another feature that I like about Kigo is the ability to extract a portion of the video and convert it to the format that I want. It is really handy and comes in useful when you only need a portion of the video (like extracting a small footage from your 3 hours outdoor shoot). Other than the usual video formats, Kigo also supports RMVB and MKV, the formats that are not supported in most converters.

Like MPEG Streamclip, Kigo also allows you to download and convert YouTube and Google videos on the fly.

(Note: Kigo Video Converter is the exact same software as Any Video Converter)

5) FLV2iTunes

If you just need a simple video converter that you can access quickly and easily, then FLV2iTunes is the one for you. FLV2iTunes is a simple docklet application for converting movies to iTunes,iPod, and iPhone supported format.

It is very easy (and fast) to use FLV2iTunes. You just need to drag and drop movies to the application at the dock. A small window will pop up, asking you some simple questions (like the format to convert to etc). Click Convert and just wait. Once it is done, it will automatically insert the movie into your iTunes library.

FLV2iTunes accepts any movies format that are supported by ffmpeg.

What other software do you use to convert videos in your Mac?

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