aci rick's List: Image, sound

• Personally I like Xilisoft’s Ripper Ultimate [an older GOTD], though that version’s getting old & is a bit slow. The Fast/WinX converters/rippers have improved, & work at roughly 2X average speed, but don’t let you set peak & average bit rate — a fairly big con when making files small. Most of the time now I use A’s Video Converter [free -- uses ATI graphics card, though *I Think* it *might* work without it] is *Fast* at 400 – 800 fps during conversion [720 X 480 -> 320 X 240][speed depends on format], but it’s buggy & has no frills. Quality is also just a bit lower. For really the best quality video frame re-size I use VirtualDub, but that can require AviSynth [+ often DGIndex] if V/Dub won’t accept the original format, & it’s time consuming, since most of the time I have to convert to an intermediate avi file, then encode that to something like H264. As always, videohelp.com has many alternatives available for d/load.

   

      Comment by mike
• re-records DVD video in your choice of several, iPhone compatible formats. By re-recording a playing DVD you don’t have to worry about *most* DRM

• app's method - aci rick on 2010-02-11

• right now I can’t see any compelling reasons anyone would want to use today’s GOTD instead of the extensive competition.
• long story short, right now I can’t see any compelling reasons anyone would want to use today’s GOTD instead of the extensive competition.
• You can get a good overview of what’s available at videohelp.com — I’m partial to Sony [they do have some decent bargains when a chain like Fry's has their apps on sale] but that’s me, & there are several low-mid price range alternatives like apps from TMPGEnc that are quite popular. A couple of times Cyberlink has been giving away the older version of its DVD suite [includes PowerDVD], & Roxio has been running sales [$50 + MIR] on their Creator 2010 package which includes Sonic MyDVD & Videowave [Sonic is a Big name in DVD authoring]. While not the easiest app I’ve ever used, the free multiAVCHD does DVD, AVCHD, & Blur Ray. And while the app itself is a bit feature limited, the free DVDStyler is available in a portable version [portableapps.com].

• What to look for in a DVD authoring app.
   1) You want to be able to customize your menu backgrounds, & you should ideally be able to design & place your own buttons, plus the highlights that show up when you select a button with the remote.

   

  2) You should be able to create as many menus as you want [within spec limits], & control how they’re laid out, very similar to the way you design a simple web site. Included in this, you should be able to set what plays 1st, for an intro video for example. And you should be able to set which buttons on the remote will work in each part of your DVD.

   

  3) Ideally you should be able to include more than one audio track [even if multiple languages aren't needed, you may need to use stereo & 5.1 -- many PC software players don't handle 5.1], & subtitles are always good [you can add them later, but it's work]

   

  4) While there are lots of features like *Stories* that can be nice, 2 of the most useful for the average home user IMHO are the ability to skip over parts of the video [without re-encoding], & play lists, which allow you to chain together several individual clips/titles… both can be nice for example if you use recorded TV shows or put together a version for children [without having 2 separate DVDs].

   

      Comment by mike —  July 17th, 2010 at 10:45 am

• “…it converts flv to dvd which is great.roxio won’t do that.”

   

  It’s a bit of work, but if it helps, you can use AviSynth to open the flv file, & VFAPI to turn it into a *fake* avi file anything will open.

   

      Comment by mike —  July 17th, 2010 at 10:52 am

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• There are some issues with Aimersoft Video Converter Standard. It’s definitely capable of messing up your system, as it messes with XviD, AC3Filter, and installs an Explorer context menu. Messing with your codecs isn’t acceptable for a converter, it should keep its own codecs separate. Very limited ability to override settings. You’re limited to its settings (you can’t type your own), and it doesn’t give you the option of using original (source) settings. When I reinstall my OS, I’m going to use an application virtualizer (not the same as a VM) to install almost all multimedia apps. Despite the glowing reviews by some of the regulars here for particular video converters, I recently actually needed to do some conversions. They’re all crap. Because they’re all so bad, I wouldn’t pay for any of them, but it’s nice to have a bunch from GOTD. After trying many of them, I was able to find one that could do one conversion, and another for a different conversion. They all had problems. So it’s generally good to install these when GOTD offers them, but you have to watch out for those like this that mess with your codecs. This wasn’t too bad, XviD is easily replaced if necessary. Messing with AC3Filter can cause all sorts of problems, however.

   

      Comment by Fubar —  July 24th, 2010 at 5:19 am
• Aimersoft Video Converter [from Wondershare], could become your favorite video conversion app.
• A Huge potential problem is when you have a bunch of video software, if you’re not very careful it can conflict. Aimersoft Video Converter fits slightly into that class of video-related apps that “doesn’t-play-well-with-others” — it’s not as bad as Format Factory or Super, but it’s not self-contained like VLC or most Cyberlink or WinX or Sony Vegas either. This GOTD’s transgressions in that area are Xvid, & AC3 filter — of the 2 AC3 filter has the more serious potential — but in many cases neither will cause any problems. RE: Xvid… along with “ac3filter.ax”, “AI_ContestMenu.dll”, & “iconv.dll”, “xvid.ax” is added to Windows’ system folder & registered with Windows — that’s a problem if your installed version is newer, + you don’t get the full Xvid install [Xvid is a free video codec mostly interchangeable with DivX, which isn't free]. AC3 filter is for playing [not encoding] AC3 audio, & if/when installed normally it has an involved set-up applet in Control Panel — AC3 filter can sometimes take over AC3 playback from whatever you use now [if your system already plays AC3], which isn’t always good thing. You can download the full Xvid & AC3 filter installs from videohelp.com.

• For alternatives, when I can use them [input/output are limited], the free A’s Video Converter &/or the ATI Catalyst Converter [both use ATI code] let me get into the 700 – 800 fps range for DVD -> 320 X 240 wmv [for a Zune]. My son recently got a DroidX, & the WinX converter [a prior GOTD] *seems* to have worked OK [1080p -> 854 X 480 AVC/AAC at maybe 2/3 real-time], but hasn’t had a lot of use/testing on my part [854 X 480 is unusual BTW]. The free X264 encoder ft ends I’ve tried [videohelp.com] left a lot to be desired in terms of usability — it was often easier to use the command line — & most all seemed very similar. The Roxio Creator 2010 VideoWave & Converter apps are nice, but AVC customization is limited & I’ve never gotten a 1.5 hour or longer video through them that played. Sony AVC encoding is abysmal. So far WinX seems the best for a lot of AVC, BUT, it won’t encode to AC3 [Blu Ray/AVCHD] audio at the same time (only aac). I’ve yet to find one app that does everything well.

   

      Comment by mike —  July 24th, 2010 at 2:28 pm

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• My favorite all around audio conversion app is the free, LameXP, though working with video more often I don’t need as many input formats as more audio-centric people. Purely FWIW, I also often use AviSynth with the NicAudio, either NicAC3Source or NicDTSSource, Amplify, & Soundout plugins for multi-channel… Amplify(0.90) prevents clipping, while Soundout saves the file as wave64, to overcome the 2GB wav file limit — it’s the only way I’ve found to always prevent AC3/DTS conversions from clipping [without altering, normalizing files etc], & then I can convert the wav64 to whatever I want/need.

   

      Comment by mike —  August 1st, 2010 at 1:26 pm

• Alternatives…
   Providing the output works on your hand-held or cell, there’s nothing wrong with Aimersoft Blu-ray Ripper & it seems as good a choice as any — I’ve got 7 or 8 tests waiting for my son to try on his DroidX, because despite having/using a Droid profile, WinX video won’t play, & before that I went through the same thing with a Zune [in my experience it's as much about if it will play as it is about how good (or fast) the conversion is]. For fastest conversion to a limited number of formats — *IF* you have ATI graphics — the ATI converter &/or A’s Video Converter use the GPU [converting DVD video to 320 x 240 wmv it shows between 700 & 800 fps encoding]. Other apps like the latest DVDFab (which also does BD) have CUDA acceleration for Nvidia graphics hardware. Output compatibility is a problem, but if it works for you, Nero’s Recode is a very fast, high quality conversion *from DVD*. For putting content into a Bluray or AVCHD layout for playing on a BD player, multiAVCHD is free, works well, & also can encode using the X264 encoder (perhaps the best avail), but it does require installing other apps. XMediaRecode isn’t bad at all, but the interface can be confusing. Format Factory & Super can be popular, but neither plays nice with other video apps.

   

      Comment by mike —  August 20th, 2010 at 2:53 pm

• #22: “I would like to have a video converter with: 1. Lossless trimming and joining”…

   

  Cut editing [i.e. trimming/joining] can only be lossless when the input & output formats [frame size, bit rate, type of encoding, settings etc.] are identical. *Any* time you re-encode you’ll have quality loss, sometimes more, sometimes less depending on the formats & amount of compression used, but *It’s always there*. To get around (or at least minimize) generational loss input higher quality than you want/need in the final result, e.g. you’ll get better results encoding video for your hand-held or cell if you start with DVD quality rather than lower quality [not HD] YouTube.

   

  Also realize that most video compression works by saving relatively few complete video frames — most frames store just those parts of the picture that have changed from the previous frame. Cut editing on one of these incomplete frames is iffy, but some software can handle it with some formats, e.g. Womble apps & mpg2. With video editing software you’ll sometimes see something called Smart Rendering — basically that means parts that don’t change aren’t re-encoded — but again it can be iffy if the source wasn’t encoded using the same encoder [with the same settings] you’re using to Smart Render.

• “… when I download an flv file and I want to convert it to an AVI-file, the converter should automatically find for me the AVI-output that comes the closest to the quality of the original… huge output file (from 5mb to 50 mb) is very common.”

   

  Sorry — that’s asking any software to do too much with too little info or input from the user. To start with, an avi file is just a container, like .mov or .mkv that can hold video. An app would have to be clairvoyant frankly to *know* what you want, what you’re going to use the newly encoded video for. Profiles &/or templates help, e.g. you want to put video on your iPhone, you choose an iPhone profile/template, but sometimes that’s only a start… Bigger video frames look nicer but take more space to store than smaller frames. Lower bit rates mean smaller files but toss out more data to achieve those lower bit rates — it’s just like the quality setting when you save jpg images. So if you can use different frame sizes & bit rates [some devices can't], *you* have to decide if you want to store more video in smaller, lower quality files, or less video in higher quality, larger files. With something like your cell where you have limited storage, do you want 1 or 2 movies, or half a dozen, knowing that quality will be the trade-off?
• When/if your output files are bigger than the original, that’s because they store more data. One reason for more data is if you enlarged the video frames… another reason (very common with avi) can be the output format stores complete picture data for every frame, rather than just the stuff that changes frame-to-frame. That makes formats like varieties of DV &/or mjpeg good for editing, &/or as an intermediate that you’ll encode to a smaller file(s) after editing, but they’re not used much [if at all] for final delivery/distribution.

• That said, be wary of any formats that Windows offers other than wmv — they just all around stink. Also be a bit wary of Xvid, which is older tech that’s easier to encode & decode [i.e. view], but isn’t as efficient as AVC, nor as high a quality generally as DV or mjpeg etc. for intermediates. For DVD quality intermediates mjpeg works well, & is faster than some codecs like the free Lagarith. For HD there’s a pack of free codecs from the people who make/sell Avid, though I like the free UTVideo better. A good compromise for either regular [SD] or HD video *can sometimes* be good old mpg2 at higher than you’ll need [i.e. higher than the final] bit rates. [Note: if/when your encoding app won't take mpg2 input, if you have XP, look into dgmpgdec & VFAPI -- VFAPI Will work in win7 32 or 64 bit, but it can be a bit of work to get it working properly.]

   

      Comment by mike —  February 18th, 2011

2 more annotations...

• You could try programs like Audacity or DePopper. The secret to eliminating clicks & pops is to get a good sample of the actual problematic sound. Then it’s a case of learning how best to utilise the options offered within the chosen program. Sometimes it may be necessary to record a stereo track in its actual single mono track – one at a time, then blend both tracks back into one again. But that’s usually only required with very hard to remove clicks etc. A free copy of Magix may still be available – (try searching the web) if so, then its Cleaning Lab will help you eliminate sound clicks etc – relatively easy as it offers comprehensivew DeClicker, Decrackler & Denoiser mastering options.

• whenever you send [e.g. e-mail] a .exe file you’re usually better off to compress it to .zip 1st, or else *if/when* AV software & e-mail filters let it through, that person will usually see several warnings telling them not to touch it. Sending .swf files OTOH, most users don’t have the projector installed to play the file on its own. Send an html file with the swf, & if Internet Explorer is their default browser, it’ll refuse initially to play it, again warning about malware. Thinking about it *from the recipient point of view*, the best I’ve come up with so far is to export your Photo to Flash project as xml, use the stand-a-lone player to create a projector file, put that projector file in the same folder as the .swf, then create a PDF doc explaining what it is, with an embedded link to start that projector file — then zip the whole thing up, including it as an attachment to an e-mail that said basically “un-zip & Read the PDF”. That way you wouldn’t have to worry about if they had Flash installed, or what version, nor would the recipient get confused about what to click or anything, & the PDF could explain what it is you’ve sent them, with pictures if you like. And most people aren’t shy about reading a pdf.

   

      Comment by mike —  April 3rd, 2011

• #25: “I’ve tried several converter programs and I’ve yet to find a good one. If this is just another slow one I really can’t be bothered. Does anyone know of a really good, fast program? It doesn’t have to be free or cheap, it doesn’t matter if it hogs resources but it must do the job properly and quickly.”

   

  Google/Bing & also check out videohelp.com including their forums. But you need to better define what you’re after first — otherwise it’s kinda like saying you need a truck but not mentioning how big. :-)
• Some examples: Nero Recode is great for converting unprotected DVD video to AVC, with both very high speed & very good quality, but if you have something besides DVD video you’re out of luck, & output compatibility is limited, without the sort of profiles you’ve seen with the converters on GOTD. Roxio’s Videowave lets you import HD AVC video in or as MKV files, & it’s very fast with good quality too, IF you want to convert to mpg2, but frame rates are limited (no 23.976 fps), & AVC output is problematic — you can do little in the way of customizing the limited AVC profiles, or creating new ones, & sometimes the result just won’t work/play. Sony Vegas [I've seen home versions for $0-$30 after MIR], has a very good mpg2 encoder, doesn’t do bad with wmv, & can use other codecs you’ve installed like DivX, but while it has good support for a lot of camera formats, you’re not going to import AVC or MKV etc., & re-sizing is both a bit soft & slow — testing their latest version 11 right now, it looks like their Sony AVC encoder might finally be worth a try, though so far it doesn’t seem as good as Nero Vision encoding to AVC.

• The cli [Command Line Interface] x264 is a great AVC/H264 encoder, & included in ffmpeg, it’s what does AVC in most all the video converters you’ll find, but it’s confusing to use [it takes several pages to explain all the possible settings], & the output AVC files are not recognized as compatible in a great many Blu-Ray/AVCHD/[DVD] authoring apps so it’ll be re-encoded. Ffmpeg itself used with whatever app or front end is a great Jack of All Trades, but as such for any given conversion there’s most always something a bit better if/when you want/need to focus on quality.

   

  Long story short, if you want the best quality & speed start with your source & target & research based on that. If you have more than one source &/or target, do it for each pair. Having to use 2, or 1/2 a dozen, or even a dozen apps that you’re happy with is better IMHO than using one you’re always dissatisfied with. :-)

1 more annotation...

• WinX DVD CopyPro copies the content from a video DVD to a folder on your hard drive as is or as a mpg2 video file, can clone the DVD to an ISO file or burn it to a fresh disc, & it can mount ISO files in a virtual drive. The driver for the virtual drive is labeled Digiarty but the burning features are StarBurn. WinX DVD CopyPro also has features to extract video or audio only, & while it didn’t work for me, it’s supposed to be able to copy just the chapters you select rather than the entire title. DVD CopyPro can bypass CSS etc. for backing up or converting your protected DVDs, but I don’t know if it’ll work on all current or future DVDs.

• Excellent app for making video tutorials….even in HD!!

   

  Must have tool especially for teachers and web marketers, not to mention that it can also record Skype and MSN (video)calls flawlessly.

   

  3 huge THUMBS UP from me!!

   

  FREE & always UPDATABLE GOOD ALTERNATIVES worth downloding:

   

  - FREECORDER4
   http://applian.com/freecorder4/

   

  FULL TUTORIAL:
   http://applian.com/freecorder4/help.php#video

   

  - CAMSTUDIO
   http://camstudio.org/

   

  - SUPERPICK 4.0 (supports AVI, FLV, SWF, MP4)
   http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Graphic-Capture/Super-Pick.shtml

   

      Comment by Giovanni —  April 26th, 2012 at 6:52 am

• It seems to be useful, but several alternatives do exist.

   

  Freeware can be used to Create online photo albums as well :

   

  http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photopresentationswin/Create_Slide_Shows_and_Photo_Albums_for_Windows.htm

   

  http://jalbum.net/en/

   

  http://computersight.com/software/how-to-create-a-stunning-photo-gallery-online-the-easy-way/

   

  http://explore.live.com/windows-live-photo-gallery

   

  http://www.shutterfly.com/learn/online_photo_album.jsp

   

  and in my opinion, best one :

   

  http://picasa.google.com/features.html

• I recomend a free Mpeg1 and Mpeg2 editor and joiner, withowt recompresion: EasyMPEG Lite v3.3.4, from http://www.easympeg.com, with speed operation, and for compresion, at specified size: VidCoder v1.3.2 from http://vidcoder.codeplex.com/

   

      Comment by Ovidiu —  June 1st, 2012 at 3:12 am