Yeah, I’ve been at it again… geeking out on software. For a while now I’ve been in search for a good video converter. (As you can see… there are tons out there.) There are numerous reasons why… but mostly for compression purposes so that uploads to my YouTube channel wouldn’t take too much time.
I use Adobe CS5 suite for my editing purposes but once trans coded the files (in HD quality) can be pretty large… like half a gig for a 10 minute video. I’ve been using the cross platform, open source Handbrake for these purposes. I do like it. The compression brings a video file down to one third it’s original size with very little loss of quality. However, the going can be slow… about one and a half to 2 times longer than the length of the video.
Plus, about a year ago I put in an Nvidia video card which has the new CUDA technology specifically to hasten rendering in Adobe Premiere… which I’m thrilled with. (The bottom line is video is rendered via the video card freeing up your CPU.) So, I wondered if there were video converters that use this technology to speed up the trans=coding/conversion.
A search yielded results… the paid program, Bagaboom, plus the 2 free ones Freemake and All Free. They all performed fine but I preferred the first 2… easy and fast with great visual results (with CUDA both took about a third of the time of the original video run time with great results.) So, if you are in the market for video converters… try these out. Oh, there is also a site that will do it for you called Media Converter.
BTW… I might just edit a video and post it so you can check out the results later in the day.
Oh, and if you are a musician or composer there is an open-source composition and notation program out there called MuseScore that Cosima made me aware of. And all you screenwriters/playwrights/novelists out there you may want to check out Celtx.
Yep… so that’s why I’m chokful of useful (debatable) nerdy info this morning. So, how was your weekend?