Tricycle

Tricycle aims to make video transcoding easier than riding a bike. Released under an open-source license, this application can convert individual videos with ease, while also allowing you to tamper with the video and audio settings.

Working with Tricycle should not pose any issues, due to the user-friendly interface layout and the simple options. The main window allows you to browse for the input file and set the destination location and format.

And speaking of supported formats, it is noticeable that Tricycle can read and decode most multimedia file types, as it is powered by other open-source tools such as FFmpeg. X264 and x265. As for the output formats, Tricycle supports MP4 and MKV containers. On the downside, it does not allow batch conversion, meaning you will have to convert one video at a time.

Once the input video file is selected, you can proceed to configure the video and audio settings. Tricycle comes with a decent default configuration, but you are free to change all the parameters as you need.  AVC andHEVC (H.264 and H.265) video formats are supported and the output quality is adjustable. Moreover, Tricycle supports HDR and 4K resolution.

Changing the file size is possible and video cropping can be either automatic or manual. In automatic mode, Tricycle can detect and remove black bars in a movie, for instance. Alternatively, you can instruct it to crop to a selected aspect ratio.

Tricycle also features noise reduction and subtitles support, as well as options to edit the audio track, its formats and its channel (mono or stereo).

While its feature set needs further development, Tricycle does provide a handy video transcoder with support for configuration templates. The conversion speed is decent, although it would come in handy to make the “Start” button a bit more obvious. Implementing batch conversion would really add to its value.