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I use Videora to convert my videos (in DivX/XviD format) to something I can play on my iPod Classic.

I really dislike it. It's clunky, riddled with adverts, sometimes doesn't convert properly (the infamous "invalid public atom" error - see Google for more) and has a UI that truly stinks.

On the upside, it's free, accepts a list of video files (via the oddly hard to find "1-click convert" button) and just gets on with the converting as it already knows the correct settings for my iPod. One final nice touch is that once they are converted, it'll automatically upload them into iTunes.

Are there any alternatives which have all the upsides but none of the downsides? Bonus points if they can set the metadata in iTunes correctly for TV shows (season, show, episode) and delete the converted file afterwards (as my iTunes settings means that a copy is made elsewhere).

I've looked at a bunch of applications (handbrake, virtualdub, mediacoder, format factory, any video converter, convertxtodvd) but many of them fail the "just select a list of files and get on with converting" test - let alone all the other features I want. I have no desire to individually set the video size of each file or the codec or the post-processing options.

I'm currently using the command line version of HandBrake (handbrakecli) and a hand-written DOS batch file to go through every file in a folder and convert it. It does most of what I want, just not in a very slick way.

Can anyone recommend anything better? It needs to work on Windows 7 and be free.

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MediaCoder can be pretty close to your 'just select and convert' requirement. Only one additional step is required: File > Load Preset. Then select "ipodvideo.xml" and it'll take care of all of the settings. (If default was changed, navigate to C:\Program Files\MediaCoder\presets\video) – Uninspired Oct 3 '10 at 17:23
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5 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

I usually use WinFF. It's fairly simple and straight-forward.

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up vote 1 down vote

Handbrake is good.

Also VLC is good. A lot of people dont even realize VLC can convert videos to other formats.

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up vote 0 down vote

use SUPER.

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Ignoring the ghastly website (which is enough to worry me), I see plenty of Google results of people complaining that it's trying to modify files in System32. As such, I'd like to avoid it. – Richard Oct 3 '10 at 15:16
The web page sucks, I know but it's just a GUI frontend to ffmpeg & menconder. And encoders can't get better than that. – Sathya♦ Oct 3 '10 at 15:18
Videora uses ffmpeg and suffers from the "invalid public atom" bug. I'm not sure how another GUI that uses the same encoder won't be? – Richard Oct 3 '10 at 15:48
its almost impossible to find the link, to boot ;p – Journeyman Geek Aug 15 '11 at 0:28
@JourneymanGeek hahaha,true :p – Sathya♦ Aug 15 '11 at 3:52
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up vote 0 down vote

[Try Adobe Premiere Pro. It has lots of support for file formats and meta-data. ;-) Just kidding.]

When I'm not editing videos, I use Format Factory for lots of conversion tasks.

I haven't had any malware or trojan issues with this program, but just read the download site carefully an make sure you've got the proper link.

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up vote 0 down vote

I would try handbrake again. I am not sure if you were using it wrong, but I really wouldn't call it complicated - you can select multiple files / add as many different ones to a queue, select the target format (It has Ipod as a predefined template), then click convert!

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