Converting video from one format to another (some apps I found)

[sojourner753]

I was pretty sure that Jason posted some article about a movie conversion software that supported nearly all of the formats out there. But I've searched all 3 ThoughtsMedia sites and can't find any hints of it. I may be crazy is all. Perhaps it never happened.

Any,

I found these apps for converting between movie formats and I was wondering if anyone had experience with them, or have alternatives.

thanks

River Past Video Cleaner (http://www.riverpast.com/en/prod/videocleaner/index.php)
MovKit Batch Video Converter (http://www.tomdownload.com/multimedia_design/video/movkit_batch_video_converter.htm)
alltoavi for windows 3.00 (http://www.brothersoft.com/dvd_video/video_conversion/alltoavi_for_windows_45032.html)


And thanks for not calling me crazy. :microwave:

[Jason Dunn]

I've heard good things about the River Past tool, though I've never used it myself. I know we've posted about such tools in the past, but I've never done full reviews on them because every tool I've tried has always ended up being just HORRIBLE. ;-) Let us know which one you prefer!

[sojourner753]

My specific scenario is that I have some a Matroska (.mkv) movie and a Ogg (.ogm) movie that I wanted to play on my SageTV box. Well, it seems that SageTV can't even see the files. So I wanted to convert them to something more friendly. Like AVI, MPEG-2, or WMV.

I gave both AlltoAvi and River Past a quick try. Okay I tried Altovi because it was free. Both apps give you the option to select either a file or a directory. So there is potential for doing media in batches.

I didn't get very far on AlltoAVI simply because there were too many technical options. I'm not video media expert. I just wanted to select a file and say go to this format. AllToAVI required me to select video encodings, and bitrates. Then audio bitrates. Then screen size. And something did I want to ignora H.264. Perhaps that means something to someone

So my next try was the River Past app.
I was much easier. Select a few files, select the video and audio codecs and let it go. The next morning both my movies were converted to AVI format.

I did notice that the 200 mb .ogm file was converted to a approx. 200mb AVI. However my 200 mb .mkv became a 14GB AVI 8O

I have yet to watch either move yet. Matter of fact I immediately deleted the 14GB one since it had reduce my hardrive to 23mb available.

Anyway, thats my 10 minute laymen's observations. If you have any specific questions, I'll try and see if I can answer them.

[Jason Dunn]

I did notice that the 200 mb .ogm file was converted to a approx. 200mb AVI. However my 200 mb .mkv became a 14GB AVI 8O

It sounds like it converted it to an uncompressed AVI - see if there's an option to use a compression codec, such as DivX (which you may need to install).

[sojourner753]

Yep, you're right.

Right below where I selected AVI was a drop down to select a compression.

Overall I've successfully converted the .mkv to both xVid and WMV9 formats. It keeps choking on the Div6 though. Could be user error.

The only issue is the fact that I always seem to lose the subtitles when I do the conversions. :?

[sojourner753]

Turns out Video Cleaner only supports subtitles in their $80 version. I'm not willing to pay that much for a casual software.

I guess I should keep looking.

[sojourner753]

This application seems to recognize .mkv files. However the trial only supports 5 minutes at a time.

Do you know if this product has subtitle support?