Best free video converter for Windows?
 

I'm looking for something that will convert .mp4 to .avi using Xvid decoder.

Handbreak and VLC can't seem to do this.

The settings I would like are:

640x352 (no change from the original video)
bit rate 800-900
maybe something that let's me tweak fps
Xvid
Audio .mp3
frequency 128k
audio bit rate 44100

Any good suggestions?

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

check out SUPER and MediaCoder, I don't know if they can do what you want but they are both pretty advanced programs.

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

Best free one I guess it should be Pazera

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

Im using Freemake Video Converter. Its also free and does the job very well.

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

Thanks guys.

I'm going to try them all. :)

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

try virtualdubmod with k-lite,both free and work good

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

try video convertor.. its the best according to me..

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

I like hammster video converter

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

Wow. Thanks again so much everyone. :)

Since I use an older tablet, the only way to watch YouTube videos that are viewable without any conversions is the lowest standard, mobile setting.

Now I'm able to download 480P on my computer and convert them to something that looks at least twice as better, and instead of 22050 hertz mono audio, I'm getting rich stereo sound as well.

I should post two screenshots comparing the two.

So far, Pazera is my favorite.

Such a huge difference. :)

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

I can recommend XMedia Recode, it is very comprehensive and covers almost every codec out there.

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

I know it's not Windows, so it doesn't answer your question but since we are on a maemo-forum anyway, I don't feel bad about suggesting the following. :D

ffmpeg, available for the N900 as well as the N9, is light, fast and extremely versatile.

In it's simplest form you would do something like this on the terminal

If you need more than that, or need better quality of reencoding, have a look at the extensive documentation, to be found here:

http://ffmpeg.org/documentation.html

Like I said, I know it's not a windows solution, but IMO ffmpeg beats anything.

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

So far, with just one attempt, this is my before and after pictures playing something on YouTube now.

http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/5867/spideyh.png

http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/9439/spidey2.png

I'm sure that I can do even better with a little more tweaking and finding the perfect converting program as well.

I'm so happy on this. :)

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

I asked before awhile back but I don't believe ffmpeg was ever compiled for Maemo 4.

I sure wish that it was though... that would make everything so much easier for me.

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

Okay, one last and final question.

I use DownloadHelper for Firefox.

I've always thought of .flv as being a cheap and dirty encoding and it never displays that well on anything that I use.

Anyway, if I choose [Medium] to download a video from my computer (.mp4 format), it's still not as big of a file size as either [480p] or even [320p] both of which are an .flv extension.

So what would be the best format to download and then convert?

My tablet can only run a 640 by 340-350ish video screen size.

Cheers.

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

For what machine? mplayer for command line would be my best bet. Plays flv out of the box and does a decent job with an otherwise crappy format.

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

mplayer seems good but is there any gui also available for it or it needs to be run via commands only ?

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

http://www.pcfreetime.com/ (Format Factory) It is best and it can do anything!

and you can run it in Linux too. Wineticks corefonts and ffdshow (i don't know if it even need those, but it works)

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

There is a GUI, but it defeats the purpose of the command line version, I think. Some people, however, have reported good results with Sib mplayer.

Never did what I need, but your experiences may be different. That being said: The command line version offers so much more than the GUI can pack in such a tiny space that a CL player seems worth the effort of entering commands. :)

Give it a shot, and try the GUI. Then try and play a video which has subs that are slightly out of sync. When I try adjusting the sync settings with both Gnome-Mplayer (a joke) and VLC on my linux laptop. With VLC it kind of works, but only for a short period of time. Usually there is also a cap to the amount of adjusting one can apply. So not the case with mplayer on the command line. It allows for extreme adjusting if needed while giving all the regular goodies out of the box.

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

You need to look at the resolution - the [Medium] mp4 files are 640x360, the [480p] files are 854x480, which is almost twice as much pixels as [360p]. So it's clear why that file is smaller.
Also the H.264 codec used in .mp4 is more efficient than the ones used in .flv, So mp4 is superior but I wouldn't call flv crappy, it displays very well at a reasonable datarate (add 10-20% compared to mp4).
3gp files for older mobile devices have a resolution between 128×96 and 320×240 pixel and crappy audio so avoid them.

So what to choose for best quality 360p results? Either download max. resolution [1080p] files and resize them if you don't mind the traffic or simply take the [Medium] file and reencode while leaving resolution untouched.
Also, check out what max. datarate your tablet can handle.
To verify the datarate of a given video, you can use VLC>Extras>Codec-info. You won't gain anything when you increase datarate of the source alone at same resolution. But you might gain some quality if you downsize a HD video and increase datarate (compared to [360p] download).
It all comes down to datarate per pixel, you can use your pocket calculator for that.

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

I don't know how I managed to forget mentioning Knots2 for Maemo.

http://wiki.maemo.org/Knots2

I used it a couple of times to convert on the fly some movies I had, and sent them over LAN, optimized for the N900 (but that's just one of the many options), to my phone,which I had connected to a TV-set. It worked surprisingly well.

It took a bit of configuring but the client for Maemo was really decent.

For the diablo client look here:
http://repository.maemo.org/extras-d...free/k/knots2/
And look at the wiki for a server on the OS of your choice.

By the way, I noticed on the download page of ffmpeg that that are "static" builds available for armel, as well as regular debian packages for armel. You may have some luck over there.

http://www.deb-multimedia.org/pool/main/

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

Great post Win7Mac.

I was toying around with the idea of downloading 1080p, but only for cartoons.

I found that my older tablet can be pushed to 720x480 if I lower the fps down to 15.

I think I'll give that conversion a try.

Thanks again for your detailed post. :)

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

Not sure if this is any good to anyone here:

SUPER © v2012.build.54.

Used to use it a lot myself when I was converting videos for my N95.

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

I don't think that's a good idea... :p
You really should find out the native resolution of your display and convert files to that. If you set a bigger resolution you're wasting resources and the tablet has to downsize.
Also, reducing framerate below 25 results in non-fluid playback (for movies, for animation its not that apparent).
Framerate should always be kept as is for best results. If you're really at the edge of performance and have a 30p cllip which stutters you might be able to make it run smooth at 25p.
If that alone does not help, lower the bitrate.

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

I rip DVD cartoons and keep the original 720X480 formatting, but yeah, the furthest I can push this is by dropping down to 15 fps.

Most of the time you can hardly tell of the lowered frame rate.

Anyway, I'll be experimenting for the next few days since I've grown tired of watching YouTube videos like that previous screenshot I provided earlier.

Thanks again for the great tips. :)

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

Which tablet model are we talking about?

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

N810

10chars

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

The N810 has a screen resolution of 800x480 and can display 65.536 colors only.
So first thing to do is check results with this setting, no million colors needed for this device, they'll get discarded/interpolated to what comes closest within the 65.536 colors range by the GPU. Save bandwith to what is really displayable.
As for best resolution, I'd use 800x450 for 16:9 content and 640x480 for 4:3 content with square pixels (Pixel-Aspect-Ratio=1). This will give you small black bars at top and bottom for 16:9 or at the sides for 4:3 content though, but should give best performance on device.
If PAR is 1 it's "native" to the display so 1 clip-pixel matches exactly 1 screen-pixel.
Your 720X480 footage has a PAR of ~1,185 if it's 16:9 content (Screen-Aspect-Ratio=16:9=1,778) which means pixels get stretched which is not native and needs interpolation done by device.

Also, why you want to use xvid.avi, it's not even listed in the specs?
Expect best performance and hardware-acceleration on any device with the codec the videocamera uses.
For the N810 that's H.263, MPEG-4.

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

Heya Win7Mac.

I use Xvid, .avi because it simply rocks. :)

Not even my first gen Xbox is able to run .mp4 files very well so I try to avoid that encoding all together.

I can fully rip a DVD, using DVD Shrink with no compression, and my Xbox can play this perfectly while it's being streamed from an external hard drive, to my computer, then finally to my Xbox.

When I actually put a 720P .mp4 YouTube video directly on my Xbox's hard drive, it won't even play.

I doubt I will ever understand how it's able to stream a 4 or 5 Gig movie, but not be able to play a 700 meg .mp4 one that's sitting right there on the hard drive.

With .avi, my Xbox can handle about a 2.3 Gig movie stream in this format.

Anyway, if I close every application and go into offline (flight) mode on the tablet, the width times height in pixels (example: 640x360) really can't be pushed any further than 23,000 total unless you want to chop down the frames per second, which I do with cartoons.

But if you think H.263, MPEG-4 is the way to go, I'll give this a try right now.

Thanks again for being so helpful on this.

Cheers buddy. :)

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

Strange, from this site I'd say H264.mp4 would be way better than xvid.avi in theory.
Probably play around with Profile settings baseline and main, and Level 3.1.

Never tried to encode a 65.536 color video in H263, am curious myself how it looks like.

And set iframes or GoP to 1 second at max. (as a general rule). 12 or 6 frames would be even better.

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

My cartoon DVDs are originally 720x480 so I thought I was keeping all of my pixels perfect when keeping this same screen ratio.

Anyway, thanks again everyone for the suggestions and ideas but I finally found the best answer for me.

http://www.clipconverter.cc/

On just one test run, this site uploaded and converted a 20+ minute HD YouTube video in under 4 minutes.

My home computer would have taken 25 minutes just to do that.

All I need now is to find the best settings on that site to achieve a super good video display. :)

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

720x480 is the physical resolution of the DVD files, so from converting it to square pixels you wouldn't gain quality but probably some performance on your N810.

Youtube always has square pixels, they know why... :)
I've tried clipconverter, comes in quite comfy but the result looked really bad, max. bitrate was around 768 kbps or so, not enough for 480p (480x854, like N9).
I'd stick to downloadhelper and XMedia Recode.
And for 16:9 content I'd always choose 800x450 for N810 or any screen with that horizontal res.

But still, these vids have million color space which the N810 can't show, that's lost bandwith. Esp. for cartoons I'd expect very good results from setting that to 16 Bit (65k colors) instead of 24 Bit.
That should give some space for better audio, smaller GOPs and 25p at least. :cool:
Please try, I wanna know now... :)

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

My tablet could never handle this.

To even get 720x480 on a cartoon, I have to go with mono audio, 22050 mghz, and 15 fps with a bit rate around 900.

Since I do prefer the best possible screen display, when using Knots 2, I also lower the audio like I just mentioned above but need to drop all the way down to 8 fps.

These settings sound pretty gutter, but it's as far as the tablet can be pushed.

800x450 though? Wow. I'll give it a try but I wouldn't expect anything higher than around 5 fps for it to keep up with this.

Do you know how I can change the color display on my N800 to 16 bit?

I never heard of doing that before.

Anyway, I'm really happy so far with 360 HD.

The difference between how I used to watch YouTube videos and now, honestly, it's like 4 times better. :)

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

Yeah, you might be right, probably it's easier for this hardware to upscale 360p than to diplay 450p, for 24bit.

You can't change it, it's screen limitation...
But you can set transcoding settings with proper SW to match 65k colors.

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

I tried your suggestions and ended up with videos that played back at around 1 frame every 5 seconds.

Strange as it might seem, it wasn't very enjoyable to watch. :)

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

From the other thread:
Why you set lower fps with 22kHz?
Cartoons are much better to compress than normal videos...

Did you set color range to 16bit (65k colors)?

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

I had to compromise and cut the sound down in half for the extra frames per second that I got from this.

I thought it was worth it just as long as your playing the cartoon at full volume.

No. I just used that converting website.

What Windows program allows you to change the color range?

I've so used many of them but have never seen that option before.

Cheers. :)

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

Didn't come across this before, so I can't tell right now.
But setting color-depth to 16 bit would really do the magic for High color gaphics displays.

I use XMedia Recode, it allows to set nearly anything you can imagine, english language is available too.
I did some fiddling with the settings of different codecs to match your requirements, but wasn't able to set 16 bit colors manually.
My Best bet would be the different 3gp-presets from Nokia-profiles and edit them. Too bad, the N810 is not there...
I did a quick search, but couldn't find which 3gp standards are limited to 16 bit. If you find something on that, you got it, I'd say.

Also, you can choose e.g. XVID, H264 or H263 codecs in a .mp4 or .avi container. And there are options to check "cartoon" or "tune" them for animation. So give it a try and also check out different profiles (basic, main) and levels (1.2, 2, 2.2, 3...)

And I correct myself, I think you should not exceed 640x360 resolution. Though N810 has no usable GPU (due to lack of drivers as I've read in the germen wikipedia, WTF?) it's easier to upscale than to playback higher res.

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

Okay.

Thanks Win. :)

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

I just use Youtube Downloader to convert my videos...

Re: Best free video converter for Windows?
 

Is it possible to run that Clip Converter website using a command line script?

I tried Links2 but it didn't work.

Just hoping there's a faster way to convert videos since that web page is slow to load on my tablet.