Best: AVStoDVD with HCEnc.
Easiest: Freemake Video Converter.
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Best: AVStoDVD with HCEnc.
Easiest: Freemake Video Converter.
I like Acrok Video Converter Ultimate.
Handbrake gets my vote.
I would have to agree Handbrake has worked great for me also.
viDrop and Handbrake, though I can't get the latter to use my processor's hardware-accelerated encoding for some reason :ermm:
I'm a big fan of AVIDemux (http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/). It is open source. It is light in features though and I only use it to convert 1 format to another.
If you pay (or use dodgy adware utils) you are doing it wrong. Years ago french uni students wanted free 'cable' and designed computer software systems that went on to become ffmpeg and VLC- the defacto open source video methods that do everything. X264 and X265- entirely free and open source- became the best encoders on the planet for MP4 ASP and HEVC. It's all free guys- the best vid stuff in the world is all free.
The codecs and libraries don't do the GUI stuff- which is where for the naive it becomes a minefield. Paid or free, the devs are using the same free codebases- and the paid solutions are usually techniaclly ILLEGAL (breaking the open source license which, yes does have full legal validity). Worse, the paid solutions are usually horribly coded and limited. They sell to fools on supposed 'simplicity'.
Smart people get that video/sound work has a bit of a learning curve- but the advantage of climbing this curve is that you will handle sound and video much better, for free, with better tools.
VLC player itself can encode , but the interface is the pits. Handbrake is a good start (remember, handbreak is just a shell around the same code used by VLC player and all the other open source and paid solutions).
Sadly the open source video editors are mostly very limited or crap. If you are doing complex editing work, a paid tool is probably needed. But encoding, re-encoding or simple editing, and free will be fine.
You wanna go to a resource site like doom9 for advice and a list of good tools. No proper free tool has ads. No simply encoder/convertor should cost even one penny. But forums like this one will contain many posts that are really ads for solutions I would never use.
Remember, it is the lazy that gets conned the most. Everything worth doing is worth investing a little time for learning and research. Google and find one of the many resource/advice sites. Do not trust sites that push single solutions- not until doing further research.
PS I know this is sound not vid, but a proggy called fre:ac should be on everyone's list since it not only does all music/sound ripping/conversion, but the dev has coded multi-core versions of the main codecs that can give insane boosts to re-encode speeds on new multi-core AMd/Intel CPUs. Got a new Ryzen CPU- try fre:ac (which is a true free project) to watch your cores get a real work-out. Tho the same 3000 series Ryzen parts are vid encoding monsters thanks to their AVX enhancements over my gen one Zen.
xilisoft
Handbrake is the only program I use
Xvid4PSP5 (The old good free Xvid4PSP5) or Handbrake. Both have worked well for me.