14 DAY TRIAL // Video has been one of our friends since moving pictures were invented. The phenomenon has developed so much in such a short time that everyone can make a movie nowadays. In fact you can even make movies without having to record the acting of real human beings.
For some time now, the technology allows us to keep our movie files on the hard disk and we have lots of formats to choose from, the most popular still being .avi, .wmv and .mpg. Now we can split, join, extract audio and convert the files from one format to another.
Here comes #1 Video Converter into action. It is a software of Apollo Tech offered for free evaluation in shareware version (so some of the features are limited). The full software costs $29.95. The installation file is no more than 3.70MB large.
The interface of the software is so easy to use that even a kid could manage the application. There is no menu bar, just the toolsbar displayed in the upper part of the window. The options are Convert, Join, Split, Audio and Image. The Preview and Execute buttons are next to each other.
The Skin "menu" contains three themes for the software (Devior, X-Plus and Kromo) so that the user won't get bored by the same look. I must admit that I was expecting more in this part and the fact that there are no major changes between the skins (except for Kromo, which is a pleasant golden color) is not an advantage, I would say.
Using the software is not at all as difficult a task as you might imagine. Unfortunately, I could not fully test the software as the shareware version will convert only 50% of the video file. But the audio file has no restrictions so I could extract the audio out of my video and it worked just fine.
If you press the Convert button, the convert dialog should appear. And it will display in the right five options to begin with. The first one is for adding a video file, the second for removing it, the third and fourth buttons are changing the file sequence and the fifth is to edit the selected item.
Clicking Go to Wizard will show the output format setup page where you can select the output type (.wmv/.asf, AVI DivX, MPEG for DVD, SVCD or VCD) and select the output path. Click Next and the user will proceed to the video output setup step 2 (and the last one). It will allow you to make your resize options. Press Convert Now to begin the process.
All the tasks are as easy as the one described above, except for the image extraction one. Upon pressing the Image button, a dialog window will appear and here the user can make the necessary settings for the image capturing.
You can use a certain time interval and choose your own size (and not the original one). In edit Time, the user will have the option to specify a certain start and end time. Also, there is the option to edit the number of pictures taken per second, in order to be sure that you will capture the pictures you want.
The Image extracting option is full featured, so you do not have to worry about the result. The extracted pictures are saved in the .bmp image format, so the quality should be pretty good. The default number of pictures taken per second is five, and in my opinion it is enough.
The Good
The software is very easy to work with. The toolbar buttons are right where you can see them. The wizard like interface guides the user step by step in order to achieve his/her goals.
The application covers all sorts of video formats and supports even DVD video format.
The Bad
The software is not a professional one, so do not expect video expert like results. The fact that it is a shareware does not give you too much of a chance to testing it.
It was kind of disturbing to close the application from the left upper corner of the window instead of the right upper one, but I guess I can live with this as long as the software works fine.
The Truth
I cannot say how the software behaves in video file converting, joining or splitting the video, but I was really impressed by the image extracting option. The software practically converted me 102.599 seconds of video file into no less than 512 .bmp files. And it did it in ~ six minutes on my Sempron 2600, 512 DDR system.
Taking into account that the software contains so many functions, I cannot argue about the price; and if it does the job as great as the image extracting or the audio track ripping, than the application is worth the money.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
