EncodeHD

EncodeHD is a lightweight and portable piece of software that prepares videos for various devices, such as iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple TV, HTC, Zune and YouTube. It addresses all types of users, regardless of their level of experience.

Since installation is not an issue, you can just save the program files to any location on the hard drive and run the executable file directly.

It is also possible to copy EncodeHD to a USB flash drive or similar storage device, and run it on any computer.

What's more important is that the Windows Registry section does not receive entry updates, and files are not left behind on the hard drive after removing the tool.

The app is wrapped in a plain and simple-to-use interface, where you can select video files by using either the file browser or "drag and drop" functionality. EncodeHD supports a wide range of format for the input, such as ASF, AVI, FLV, M4V, MKV, MOV and MP4.

Aside from pointing out a custom target folder, a few configuration settings are available through this tool, for more experienced users. For instance, you can enable H.264 and stream copying modes, make the app automatically split videos if their sizes surpass 4GB, as well as write FFmpeg flags.

EncodeHD offers multilingual support, has a good response time and takes a reasonable amount of time to finish a conversion job, while consuming a low-to-moderate amount of CPU and system memory (i.e. the computer's performance level is preserved within normal parameters). The output videos have a good image and sound quality.

We have not encountered any issues throughout our evaluation, since the app did not hang, crash or pop up error dialogs. Taking into account its intuitive layout, EncodeHD is suitable for all types of users.