Best Free Universal Transcoder

by Johnny Karp 16 August 2008 9 Comments

Hello friends! I’m proud to report that the Freeware Mission is going as planned, maybe even better. Three episodes to go until I’ll give you the list of essential freeware programs that I installed in my PC during this quest. The program that I’m going to choose now is a universal video and audio transcoder, something that allows you to convert various video and audio file formats with ease.

Normally I don’t trust programs that say they can do everything. If you say you can do everything you end up by doing everything badly. That’s the case with most video and audio transcoders. I prefer specialized transcoders but I admit that having a universal transcoder in my computer is a must.

There are a few freeware options available. One of them is SUPER, but I find it a little bit too complicated and I’m even a little bit worried about it because of some reports claiming it contains spyware. Another option is MediaCoder, but it still has a lot of bugs, not reliable enough. The best option if you ask me is FormatFactory. It can convert almost any type of video and audio file, from avi and mpg to swf and 3gp. And there’s even more: it can convert graphic files (jpg, bmp, png, tiff, ico) and has also a basic dvd ripping feature.

You can download FormatFactory from here, it’s free!

My Evaluation	9
Operating System	Windows All
Size	14.5 MB
Author	www.formatoz.com
Version Tested	1.42

Two more episodes to go, with three great freeware programs in them! The Freeware Mission, going all the way!

Subscribe to the full RSS feed to get the latest articles fast and easy!

If you have any trouble with this software just leave a comment, I’ll help you out!

9 Comments »

Anonymous said:

Hello can you explain me how I can use Format Factory to create from multiple VOB files (which together make one movie) can make 1 output file?

# 5 September 2008 at 12:11 pm

Johnny Karp said:

Hey. You have the DVD to video file option under the Rom Device/DVD/CD/ISO menu. It works only if your movie is burned to a DVD-video and you can select the type of output file and everything.
If the vob files are on your hard disk you can use MeGUI or AutoGK to make an avi file out of your vob. Please let me know if you have any further questions. Cheers.

# 5 September 2008 at 2:19 pm

Nvidia Badaboom and ATI Avivo GPU / Битва насмерть | Гаджет Мания в 21 веке said:

[...] Best Free Universal Transcoder | Freeware Mission [...]

# 6 December 2008 at 11:35 pm

Bilgisayarınız İçin 72 Ücretsiz Yazılım | catlakses.com said:

[...] Format Factory – Universal transcoder, converts almost any video, audio and graphic file formats. Can also extract DVD Video to avi. [...]

# 23 January 2009 at 10:19 pm

Amrit said:

SUPER is not malicious in any way and MediaCoder does not have any known bugs yet in the latest release.

# 3 February 2009 at 4:37 pm

Adam Maciaszek said:

witam, mam kilkaset plików muzycznych do skonwertowania. Jak wrzucić pliki do programu? Nigdzie nie zauważyłem opcji importuj… Niby można przeciągać pliki z folderu do programu, ale tylko po jednym (jak przeciągam więcej to do programu trafia i tak tylko jeden). Da się wrzucić od razu wiele plików?

# 18 March 2009 at 8:35 pm

Johnny Karp (author) said:

@Adam
English, please. I can only understand about 20 words in Polish

# 20 March 2009 at 11:07 am

Avirup Chatterjee said:

hi

I used mediacoder and handbrake also I found both are not so good as mediacoder is better option than Handbrke but I have downloaded the Format FActory and I am trying to use H264 in mkv is that possible to use that filter in mkv

# 30 May 2009 at 9:05 pm

Johnny Karp (author) said:

As far as I know FormatFactory does not support mkv.

# 31 May 2009 at 7:34 pm