H.264 Encoder

Simply put, H.264 is one of the most commonly used formats for video recording and compression. It also goes by the names of MPEG-4 Part 10, AVC (Advanced Video Coding), H.264/AVC or even H.264/MPEG-4 AVC), and it was designed as an industry standard that could provide good video quality at lower rates than other commonly used standards.

Since H.264 is so popular, there are obviously many programs that you can use to encode your videos in said format. Today, we’re going to take a look at a simple tool suggestively titled H.264 Encoder.

There’s absolutely nothing fancy about H.264 Encoder; its entire interface is presented in one small window, and the whole conversion process is extremely intuitive. First you must select a video source from your computer, and then choose the location and the name of your new output file. While, for some reason, the program seems to be able to save videos as MP4, AVI or MKV, the only format that it can actually create is MP4. If you pick any other format, a message will prompt you to change your file extension’s name to MP4.

While this is a very simple tool, you can choose one of many encoding settings, which are basically a list of resolutions. You can export videos in Full HD (1920 x 1080), in the more commonly used 1280 x 720, or in standard definition (640 x 480). Unfortunately, there’s no possibility for encoding videos in 4K definition or higher (which H.264 is totally capable of), but one probably shouldn’t expect more from a free program that shows its age.

If your video quality needs aren’t higher than Full HD, then yes, H.264 Encoder can be a useful tool, especially since it’s so lightweight and accessible. As a bonus of sorts, it can also modify the video’s aspect ratio to either 5:4, 16:10 or 16:9.