Good video conversion app?

[zridling]

Anyone using a good video conversion app they'd recommend? I've been using VIDEOzilla which has worked well and fast for me, but am wondering what else is out there that others find useful.

[tenseiken]

To and from what formats?  VirtualDub(Mod) is pretty good...

[mouser]

i'm fond of EO video converter for converting realmedia files to other formats.

http://www.eo-video.com/overview.htm

[Scott]

I was looking for a video-conversion utility not too long ago, and tried several.  The one I decided on was (stupidly-named) River Past Video Cleaner.  It seemed to have very good format support for the price range, and its interface was bearable to me (most others were pretty awful in that regard).

This was a few months ago though; River Past has revamped the "Video Cleaner" product since then, and has also broken it up into several versions.  I never did register Video Cleaner.

There are a lot of options in this software genre.  And I hasten to point out that it's not where I have the slightest bit of experience or expertise.  Someone I know who does a lot of heavy-duty conversion work uses ProCoder.  I don't have a link for it, since when I looked it up originally, the price tag started giving me cardiac arrest.

[mouser]

i agree with scott's comments about user interface.
most of the video conversion apps have a horrible user interface - river past's is nice.

[nudone]

i can't claim to be an expert - just done quite a bit of converting from one format to another. seems to me if you are converting between fairly regular formats and don't really mind on how things come out then sticking to the 'one size fits all' type programs will suffice - just go through the wizards and you'll get a satisfactory result.

beyond that - if you are picky about the end conversion then you might need a whole variety of tools.

virtualdub and avisynth always seem to be top of the utils you'll find mentioned at dedicated video websites like:

videohelp.com http://www.videohelp.com/

doom9.net http://www.doom9.org/

i'd also like to know if there is single program that will do everything and do it well - 'cleaner XL' isn't cheap but it's meant to be great. things like adobe premiere are brilliant for editing but rubbish for conversion tasks.

most things seem to work fine until you start converting between different frame rates - if there is something that excels in that area then i'd like to know.

[Scott]

Whenever I use (or "try using") VirtualDub, I feel like there was a college class or two that I should have taken just to have a friggin' clue how to use it.  And can it really do all the conversions the other products can?

I'm sure, as usual, that's mentioned so often simply because it's free.

[nudone]

true, the freeness of it must play a part in it's popularity.

but as there are several flavours of the program with slight modifications here and there i think it shows that virtualdub is quite versatile - once you get used to it. i remember having it installed for years before using it and that was ony after going through some of the guides other people had made.

with the right filters and the right codecs you should be able to get it to do most conversions. i have to admit that it's probably not worth the time trying to figure it all out if you are just doing typical conversions.

[tenseiken]

Yeah, getting VDub configured can be a pain.  It just takes some getting used to--I never went to any classes on it. :p  There are plenty of sites (two mentioned already) out there with a ton of info (tutorials, etc.) on using programs like VDub.  To be honest, I mostly use it to compress .vob files to XviD, and AutoGK does most of that for me.  Still, it's great for chopping/reassembling AVIs, producing screengrabs, dumping audio, and so on.

[Scott]

The idea of VirtualDub classes was a joke.    I've been able to figure out how to chop videos down with it, but I've had no need for it otherwise.

I'd be interested to hear opinions on some of the other converters out there.  A lot of them look nice, but I can't find one that has the wide format support of River Past Video Cleaner.  (Formats like OGM are commonly missing from others, it seems.)