Reader's Choice Free Video Converter

Until video publishers decide to agree on a standard format for movie downloads, video converters are a necessary evil. This is one of the most crowded software categories in existence, with literally thousands of products attempting to fill a void in some capacity. A full 183 different applications were selected as a favorite by readers, giving no one application a real lead in the space. Many of the 183 are single function tools that are great at what they do, a few offer conversion of several formats, but only a couple of them really deliver at being a great tool for most video conversion needs.

Reader's Choice: SUPER, aka Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer leads this crowded pack of applications with a respectable 10% of reader's votes. It's among the best in this category and deserves a place at the top for it's ability to convert virtually anything you throw at it. Because of it's depth of features, SUPER is a little more bloated than most of the competition and I've occasionally found it slowing down my system if I use it for too long. Having said that, if you haven't ever tried SUPER, I highly recommend downloading the app. It's very likely SUPER will replace whatever you used for video conversion in the past.

2) Any Video Converter comes in second with 9% of votes. Any Video Converter offers one of the cleanest interfaces for video conversion, with support for many common file types including MOV, WMV, MPG, RMVB, and AVI. It lacks specific profiles for converting video for playback on PSP or iPod, making it less complete than SUPER. If you want MP3, OGG, 3GP, and support for portable device profiles, upgrade to a pay version is required.

3) MediaCoder received another 9% of the vote from readers, offering a solution that's more complete than Any Video Converter. MediaCoder includes output options for portable devices and provides an excellent solution for converting most common file types, more closely resembling SUPER in features. Of the top three as chosen by readers, this would likely be my top choice.

4) Prism reminds me of my favorite video converter WinFF. While the two aren't identical, the interfaces are quite similar and features are exposed in a common layout. Prism received 6% of reader votes, but I find it to be far more limited than the top 3 as the free version is primarily used to get people to upgrade to a paid version.

5) VirtualDub also appeared near the top of the Reader's Choice list of Video Editing apps. It does make an excellent convert for going from many formats to one of the many codecs that use the AVI wrapper, because it allows for very convenient batch processing and job scheduling. One key advantage VirtualDub has over other apps on this list is it's support for easily performing video enhancements typically available only in a full-fledged video editor. And being able to open several instances of VirtualDub sets it apart for doing some parallel workflow related tasks. Despite having only 5% of reader votes, VirtualDub is a video tool that should be a part of every multimedia toolkit.

6) Media-Convert, an online video conversion tool, received 4% of reader votes. It's unique on this list in that it's a hosted Web service that uploads a file from your computer, lets you choose an output format, and then download the converted file. This is a great service if you need access to file conversion from a public computer and can safely dodge clicking on their ads while trying to get the file converted. It's really only useful for small files because of the upload time involved, although it will work for fairly large files as well. In addition to video and audio files, Media Convert handles documents of various types and compressed files too.

7) Handbrake first became popular with Mac OS X users as a way to rip DVDs. Windows and Linux versions followed. The Windows version does not rip commercial DVDs the way it's Mac counterpart does, but it does have excellent presets for Apple devices. If you have an iPhone or AppleTV, Handbrake is highly recommended as a free solution. 3% of readers picked Handbrake as their favorite.

8) Videora iPod Converter comes in several flavors depending on which iPod you have, including iPhones. While that makes it simple for iPod owners, you really don't need a different app for each device, you need the right output. The company also makes a pay product that combines download management with RSS subscriptions and BitTorrent downloads. 3% of readers selected Videora as their favorite video converter.

The 8 apps listed above make up 49% of reader votes. The remaining 51% of votes were widely spread across 175 applications making video converters a highly diverse field to choose from.

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