This is a guest post written by Rono, the enthusiastic freeware reviewer.

Windows users definitely do not have a shortage of video converters at their disposal. That’s great on the one hand but on the other hand it could make the selection process quite difficult. The video converter applications differ greatly in complexity, some require minimal user input and knowledge of video terminology while others do require advanced knowledge about bitrates, codecs, filters or framerates.

XMedia Recode falls into both categories. The free video converter comes with several pre-configured profiles that can be used to convert videos with just a few clicks and no background knowledge at all. There are profiles available for gaming systems like Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Sony’s Playstation 3 and for mobile devices like Apple’s iPod and iPhone series, dozens of Nokia cell phones and other devices. Way more than 100 profiles are available to select and there is the option to select custom settings as well in case the device is not in the list.

Custom settings are very extensive. Dozens of video and output formats and codecs can be selected to convert the video into a different format.

Video files can be opened from the computer’s hard drive or directly from the DVD (or video_ts folders located on your hard disk drive)

XMedia Recode provides features that most video converters do not. Most of these features are located in the Crop / Preview tab. This includes the option to cut part of the movie, change the resolution, crop the movie, deblock, invert or correct the colors.

This freeware program uses a German interface by default but it can be changed in Optionen > Sprache to English, French, Japanese and Italian. It also has a portable version.