Hintonblogger

Inevitably I seem to run into situations where I have a video in one format and need to get it into another. Windows Media Video file (WMV) into Flash or Quicktime, back the other way, or to simply squeeze the size down a bit.

This has happened twice to me in the last day - once with a video clip (1.2 gb) from my mythtv box and another with a Windows Movie Maker generated WMV file. In the first case Mpeg Streamclip helped me take that 1.2 gb tv recording and shrink it to around a 20mb Quicktime file that could be viewed via the web. In the second case, I used MediaCoder to take a 5mb WMV file of a family "commercial" we created (you can see that one at http://family.hintonweb.com) into a 3.5 mb FLV file to embed in our family blog.

These two programs are like my video (and audio) converter swiss army knifes and are well worth their install. I have tried the whole range of video converters (both paid and free) and I haven't seen any that do things quite as well as these two. They just seem to come in handy!

P.S. I also use Handbrake occasionally when I might need to grab a clip from a DVD.