Quick Media Converter - Fast, Free Multimedia Conversion for Windows

If you're looking for a fast, easy-to-use (and I mean incredibly simple) way to convert practically any video on your computer to any format you want, then Quick Media Converterer might be just what you need.

I downloaded Quick Media Converterer last night. I'd been watching some of the political conventions, and there were a couple speeches I wanted to save. I was able to grab what I wanted off one of the network's websites, but found that the videos had been saved in Flash video format. It looks fine, and I'm certainly able to play the video (in VLC), but I wanted to save it in a format that everything could save. Divx, perhaps, or maybe even MPEG for burning to a VCD or DVD.

I'd read an article a while ago on Lifehacker about this program - Quick Media Converter - and how it could handle pretty much anything you threw at it, so I decided to give it a try.

First, if you're familiar with FFmpeg, the commandline utility for playing and converting videos, and are comfortable with using it via the commandline, then Quick Media Converter (just like WinFF), isn't really necessary. There's nothing Quick Media Converter can do that FFmpeg can't do, because Quick Media Converter is just a GUI frontend to FFmpeg.

However, for those of us not entirely comfortable with the commandline, or for those of us who are, but don't know all the tips and tricks (and syntax) of FFmpeg, then Quick Media Convert is a fantastic program.

It's really easy to use. Just drag the video you want to convert into the main window. You can use the contextual menu to get detailed information about the video (which could come in handy if you want to tweak some of the conversion settings). When you want to convert the video, just look at the row of icons running along the top of the window and select which one fits your needs.

Quick Media Converter comes with 65 presets, supporting everything from Divx to DVD to Quicktime and Windows Media Videos. It also includes some presets for devices such as the iPod and PSP, for those instances when you want to move a video off your computer and take it with you.