http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffmpeg/

An amazingly powerful application that every video editor needs to add to his collection. I have opened up ffmpegx countless times to standardize formats when coming from different sources.

This software is so simple but underneath its user friendly format lies a monster codec converter. It is a simple as a drag and drop of your video files, a few clicks of tabs and you’re done. The only downfall of this software is its speed if you’re not using a G5 dual processor. Obviously you’re expected to be waiting a long time for a file to go from an .avi to an .mp4 (especially if the file is larger than 500MB) but I found that if you can use Apple’s Compressor to create your high quality MPEG2 for DVD; you’re better off because after all it’s all about speed.

For those of you who read “speed” and say:”Yeah, ok speed but I want quality too”. Well with ffmpegx you’re getting all the quality and customization that you need. To give you an idea, I just coverted a 37.5MB MPEG1 file into a AVI XviD. It took 5 minutes, brought down the file size to 10MB and amazingly kept the quality the same to an untrained eye. I was blown away. I kept playing both files side by side and stood there in awe. The noise reduction is mind boggling.

For those of you who want to watch the software in action; I just made a quick tutorial that explains some of the different options and gives an overview look at ffmpegx. Find the video here: http://www.gomezproductions.com/misctutorials.html

Try it out today and see for yourself.

hi, I really really need some help!!!

im doing a course which requires that i take clips off of my own filmed dvd’s (of myself)to show evidence of my professional development. only prblem is i honestly dont know how.i have Nero and all the regular windows applications but nothing seems to work. please help i’m just not that pc literate!!!

tah.
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Downloaded software, tried encoding a .mov. File size was zero kb. Any suggestions?