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Free Apps to Conveniently Convert Videos to Mobile Devices
0 Comments | Posted by Bob in Tips & Tricks
Our life are full of mobile devices like iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, BlackBerry, PSP and much more and watching videos on these big screen mobile devices is more and more common especially as the development of advanced smart phones. However, the video format incompatible problem may bother you especially if you are a quick temper. If you know nothing about video conversion and you just want a convenient tool to convert the video by a few clicks without taking the trouble to select the corresponding settings one by one manually. Then the following listed apps are what you are seeking for. They have the presets or profiles for mobile devices and they are free. Hope you can find the one that works best for you.
Avidemux
Using Avidemux to convert a video to play in iPhone, iPod, iPod 5.5G, Zune, Sony PSP, and Microsoft Zune, you can click Auto on the top menu and chose the one you want. Then the application will automatically make all settings so that you don’t need to manually make the settings on the left panel. It supports a wide range of import file types including 3GP, ASF, AVI, FLV, MPEG, MKV, MOV and MP4. Besides, it is also a great video editing program; check here.
Auto format option in Avidemux
Xvid4PSP
Xvid4PSP has many format preset options for mobile devices including PSP, PS3, iPod, BlackBerry, iPhone, Nintendo DS, Xbox 360, SonyEricsson, Nokia, and Itouch. But it works a bit too slow.
Format options in Xvid4PSP
Format Factory
Format Factory is a versatile multimedia file converter, converting all popular video, audio, and picture formats to others. To convert videos to mobile devices, click the option of All to Mobile Device under Video in the main interface and then choose the corresponding device. It covers a very wide range of devices.
profile option in Format Factory
HandBrake
HandBrke has the presets for iPod, iPhone and iPod Touch. Just select the wanted one and it will do the job quick and great. Supported sources: Any DVD-like source: VIDEO_TS folder, DVD image or real DVD, and VOB and TS files. Most multimedia files it can get libavformat to read and libavcodec to decode. To make Zune HD in the presets, check here.
Presets in HandBrake
Videora
Videora has individual converters for devices of Apple, Sony, RIM, Nokia, Microsoft, Motorola, Sonny Ericsson and more. They can convert all popular types of video files.
Videro iPod Converter
The above listed video converters are the best I pick from all the free converting apps， but if you cannot find one that satisfies you with the reasons of working not fast enough，output quality not great enough to meet your requirement or any other reason， you can try a paid video convert. Our video converters can convert various videos to mobile devices with fast working speed, excellent output video quality and absolutely synchronous video & audio. If you want to directly convert video from encrypted DVDs to mobile devices, check our DVD ripper.
10
For Beginners: the Best Way to Play Various Videos on iPhone
0 Comments | Posted by Bob in Multimedia
Recently the hot sale iPhone 4 catches everyone’s eyes in the digital product market. Although the iPhone 4 has bug issues, it’s still worthy of the coolest smartphone. Let me guess: you have never got an iPhone and this time you couldn’t resist the temptation of the new iPhone 4 and have just bought one. With the iPhone big widescreen of 320×480 and retina display screen for iPhone 4, you can’t wait to watch videos especially HD videos on it. But wait, you may find your video format is not accepted, then what to do?
iPhone supports video H.264, MPEG-4 in .mp4, .m4v, .mov formats and audio files in AAC, MP3, M4a. If you want to play the unsupported format video on iPhone, you will:
1.Install codecs for the iPhone to play your video?
When our computer software player cannot handle the video format, we can download the corresponding codec for it but can we do this on smartphones? It’ll be very cool to watch various videos on the smartphone, but I’m sorry to say this method doesn’t exist yet.
2.Use the multi-format supported player- VLC4iphone?
As previously introduced in this post, VLC player is the media software coving most formats with all codecs built in. It’s used for all Windows and Mac OS and what’s more, it’s available for Smartphone like iPhone and iPod touch, that is, VLC4iPhone. In order to get VLC4iPhone at Cydia store, you have to jailbreak you iPhone or iPod touch.
However, I have searched online for this app and found the user experience for it is unsatisfactory. Users’ complaints include no fullscreen as advertised, lag video and some annoying advertisements, only working well on a certain type of video, etc. Perhaps there will better version for it in the future or you may try your luck at it.
3.Convert the video format?
Converting the video format to the iPhone supported format is the best way to watch videos on iPhone at least for the time being. There are many excellent video converters and some are free like Avidemux, HandBrake and Xvid4PSP. They are powerful with great output quality.
If you want a tool to convert your video with faster speed, optimized video quality for your iPhone, you may be interested to check our iPhone video converter and free download to have a try. Or, if you would like to watch your favorite DVDs on your iPhone, you can use a DVD to iPhone converter to directly rip your encrypted DVDs to your iPhone with fast speed, excellent quality and ability to decrypt DVDs with new copy protection.
iPhone 4
Obviously, the newest and hottest attraction in the cellphone market recently is the iPhone 4. It was reported that this fresh out of the oven iPhone is on hot sale with 600,000 pre-orders on its first day. The selling points of this new pet including Retina display screen (great for watching HD video) , Multitasking, HD video recording, 5-megapixel camera with LED flash and so on. All these new cool features make it be worthy of a cool phone.
Unfortunately, people have found iPhone 4, the most successful product launch in Apple’s history, has bug issues, with complaints about data signal-strength problems. Then in an official statement posted on July 2, Apple said the problems are due to the wrong algorithm formula for signal indicator and it would issue a free software update in a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula, also it reminded the not full satisfied customers that they could return the undamaged iPhone within 30 days of purchase for a full refund.
So will you return the bug iPhone 4? In a forum, someone has launched a vote for this issue and I find more than 70% people voted to keep it for they have no issues currently and over 20% people chose to give Apple chance to fix it and then decide. You can check the vote here. If you haven’t got the iPhone 4, this vote may also help you decide on whether or when to buy the new iPhone 4.
For people who are willing to give others’ chance to fix the problem they have and for those who are waiting for the fix result to decide on whether to buy it, hope Apple won’t disappoint them.
Will you return iPhone 4? Please tell us your opinion in the comments.
You may be dissatisfied with just watching your favorite Youtube videos online so you also download them to you HDD. Even so, you may be still dissatisfied and want to convert these FLV videos to DVD so that they can be stored forever. Then, as a perfection pursuit person, if the downloaded videos are not so satisfactory (not HD video and even poor SD quality), you may feel like improving the original video quality by converting to DVD format.
So is there any way to convert the FLV video to DVD with improved quality for the result video?
I’m afraid the answer is not. FLV is a flash video container format mainly used to broadcast videos through Internet, so it is aimed to lower the bandwidth consumption with lower bitrates for both contained video and audio compared to DVD.
Most FLV container contains stereo at 44.1 Hz and video bitrate ranges from 400 to 1200 kbps, while a common DVD contains 8000+ kbps video and 48 KHz, 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound. And converting the DVD to another format will more or less reduce the quality but converting from other formats to DVD cannot enhance the quality.
You can make efforts like choosing better software to convert the FLV to DVD to get at least not worse quality , but no way to really improve the original poor quality. Therefore, if you cannot endure the poor quality of the video you got, you’d better seek for other video sources with higher quality. There are many HD videos online nowadays. If you cannot find bette
FIFA World Cup 2010
The spectacular FIFA World Cup is going on and fans are crazy for it these days. Fortunately, even if they cannot go to the scene to watch the tournaments on the pitch, they won’t miss every wonderful moment of this great event with the live broadcast on the TV.
However, you are engaged with something important and cannot sit before the TV to enjoy the broadcast when all fans in the world are crying and cheering with passion and enthusiasm for their star players. Upset and downcast now?
Or you want to savor the splendid moments of the great tournament wherever and whenever in the later days of your life. After all, there is only one time to watch the real scene or live broadcast and TV rebroadcasts are limited. Anyone or anything can help?
If you are one of the World Cup fans who has the above problems, this article may help you: You can record the live broadcast or download the video online and even you can convert the video to play on any mobile device you have, so that you can watch the World Cup anytime and anywhere.
Record World Cup 2010 with Digital Video Recorder (DVR)
A DVR allows you to conveniently record videos from TV to the built-in hard drive and some DVRs even have built-in DVD recorders which let you also save videos forever by burning them onto a DVD media. If you haven’t got a DVR, do some research online or ask for others’ opinion before you buy one.
Download World Cup 2010 Online
There are various World Cup video on video site like Youtube, iFilm, Myspace, Dailymotion and some of them are HD video. Moreover, you can get the videos captured in different angles while the live broadcast has only limited angles. As to the way to download videos online, you can refer to this article.
Convert World Cup Video to Play on Different Devices
If you can watch the recorded or downloaded World Cup videos around with your mobile devices such as iPod, iPhone, Zune, PSP, etc., isn’t it terrific? Check our video converters that can output videos with optimized quality for the intended device, fast speed and smaller file size (a 90 minutes single World Cup match will take a large space of your limited hard drive).
iPod video converter
If you have recorded the World Cup videos to DVDs, you can also convert the recorded DVD to whatever format and even to HD video if your DVR is not HD DVR, using TouchUp DVD Ripper Platinum.
TouchUp DVD Ripper Platinum
Hope you enjoy this hot tournament with the cool videos conveniently!
8
Blu-ray to DVD— DTS Audio Playback Compatibility Problem
0 Comments | Posted by Bob in Multimedia
Just as Blu-ray discs are not as common as DVD discs, Blu-ray players are not common as DVD players. Everybody has DVD players everywhere like car, bedroom, kitchen etc. but buying a Blue-ray or HD player for every room would cost too much. So you may want to convert their Blu-ray movie to DVD so that they can be played on DVD player to make life easier. Or you just have a home video filmed in Blu-ray and you want to make copies to send to friends that don’t have Blu-ray player.
However, you may meet such problem as the burned DVD that is converted from Blu-ray has no sound when playback in DVD players. One possible cause of this problem is the DTS audio track in the original Blu-ray file.
DTS is a series of multichannel audio technologies, used both in standard DVD disc and Blu-ray disc. All BD-ROM players are required to support DTS. However, although PC software players and modern DVD players can play DTS audio without problem, early DVD players cannot recognize DTS audio tracks, because DTS was not part of the original DVD specification and the DVD specification was revised to allow optionally include DTS audio tracks. The DVD title must carry one or more primary audio tracks in AC-3 or LPCM format (in Europe, MPEG-1 Layer 2 is also an allowed primary track format). The DTS audio track, if present, can be selected by the user.
Therefore, when you are converting your Blu-ray movie to DVD, you need to pay attention to the playback compatibility of the audio track in your DVD player. If your burned DVD has no sound in playback, firstly you can find out what audio track it has (see this in the video converter when converting or drop the converted file in MediaInfo for the file detail information). If the soundtrack is DTS format, you’d better convert it to AC3 when doing the conversion of Blu-ray to DVD.
Free video converters like AVStoDVD that can convert Blu-ray to DVD has this DTS to AC3 converting option:
convert to AC3 audio in AVStoDVD
If you would like to convert your Blu-ray movies to MKV format so that they can be widely played by your computer, portable players or standalone devices like HTPC, Popcorn Hour and Western Digital player, refer to this article: How to Convert M2TS to MKV for Free.
6
Choose the Right Codecs or Use Media Software Covering Most Formats
0 Comments | Posted by Bob in Tips & Tricks
A codec is a device or computer program to encode a data stream for transformation, storage or encryption and/or decode it for playback or editing. Most video software can only work with some formats and if you want it to work with the unsupported formats, you have to download and install the necessary codecs.
There are individual codecs and codec packs that include all codecs. How to choose when you face so many codecs and codec packs available online and your computer may already has dozens of codec files? Following are some points for your to refer to:
1. Install only the right codecs that are needed and do so from individual codecs not from a codec pack. This leaves less chance of different codecs running into each other. You can find all the codecs you’ll need here.
Although codec packs are a quick fix, for you don’t need to find the right one from other places and just one pack gives you all, codec packs may damage existing codecs and systems because too many unneeded things are installed at a time in a machine. So codec packs sometimes cause more problems than they fix.
2. If you are a noob without knowledge of what codecs to install for your specific needs, or you are too lazy to find exactly what is needed and think of installing a codec pack with most codecs to get things done once and for ever, you can install a good codec pack widely regarded as the one with least side effect like ffdshow.
Some formats you can’t find individual codecs for like H264, also use FFDShow. When you install FFDShow, deselect all file types except the only ones you need to decode when configuring; otherwise you can have the same conflicts you’ll find with most codec packs.
3. The alternative to installing codecs for your video player is to use such players capable of playing most formats as KM Player, VLC Media Player and MPCHC, for those uncommonly used formats are not worth installing codecs for. If you need Real or Quicktime player, use Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative that don’t have all the extra components that the official players install. I think the best solution to a problem is to give people what they need not what they want for people may not be always aware of what they need, so I recommend this way which is simpler and easier than installing extra codecs.
For example, you may want to play VOB files on your Windows Media Player which has always struggled with DVD and mpeg-2 playback because Microsoft didn’t want to include licensed mpeg-2 playback in Windows, you can install ffdshow with all codecs, but the better is to install MPEG2 codec like Stinkys MPEG2 Codec for the specific playback of VOBs, and the best alternative way is to use VLC Media Player/ MPCHC for playback the VOBs and almost anything else.
Note: If you don’t want to be bothered with downloading the extra codecs for your video converters or editors to work, check our video converters with all codecs built-in and a bunch of features including simple video editing.
M2TS and MKV are both video container formats. M2TS format is commonly used for high definition video on Blu-ray Disc and AVCHD. It is based on the MPEG-2 transport stream container and is also known as BDAV MPEG-2 transport stream. However, this format is not as widely supported as MKV by your computer, portable players or standalone devices like HTPC, Popcorn Hour and Western Digital player. So you may need to convert the m2ts format to the common video format like MKV.
I have searched online for a free software tool to convert m2ts to MKV and couldn’t find such a tool to work well. All of the programs that can directly do the work are commercial software. But there are some good ways to do that with a few free programs working together.
1.Import the m2ts to tsMuxer and use the demux function to split the file to separate video and audio raw streams.
2.Use MKVmergeGUI （included in mkvtoolnix） to mux the separate video and audio streams together to an MKV.
This way is simple and fast without quality loss, and if you don’t remove the tracks or subs, etc., it doesn’t reduce the size of the file, for it just packages the file into MKV container without re-encoding the video/audio.
If you want to compress the file to smaller size, you can follow this way:
1.Use HdBrStreamExtractor （the GUI of eac3to) to demux the m2ts. You can extract the video track as MKV file and transcode the audio track to, say AC3 640Bit to get rid of HD sound.
2.Mux the video and audio in MKVMergeGUI.
If you want to reduce more file size, you can transcode your video track to 720p H.264 before muxing it in MKVMerge.
LG IQ
The Telus LG IQ cell phone, also called LG Monaco, was released in the end of last year as an advanced smartphone, running on the Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system, with a bunch of features such as a fingerprint sensor, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a 3.2-inch screen and more. Among the features, the 3.2” WVGA touch screen display and 480×800 resolution is excellent for enjoying your favorite videos anywhere and anytime.
The media formats the LG IQ supports are: MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, AMR, MPEG4, WMV, H.263, H.264. So if you want to watch videos with formats not supported on LG IQ like AVI (Xvid/Divx), the common and popular video format we usually have, how can you do that?
Try Mobile Media Players
There are some mobile media players to let you play the video with format that is not officially certified for your phone, and Divx Mobile Player and TCPMP are two such media players for playing Xvid/Divx video.
1.TCPMP (The Core Pocket Media Player) is a free media player for embedded devices IE; PocketPC, Windows Mobile with codecs like mpeg4 video (XviD,DivX), mp3 (libmad), vorbis (Tremor) and supports for third party plugins (AAC). However, this free version is abandoned for years so it may not support the newer version of the codecs your videos have.
You may get jerky playback if your video has higher resolution than your screen, for example watching a 1280×760 movie on a 800×480 screen. In this case, you can use the freeware pocketdivxencoder to convert/resize down the video to 800×480 before view it with TCPMP.
2.Divx Mobile Player supports Divx/ Xvid codec videos from version 4 onward, and it is beta software available for a limited time only and will expire.
Convert the Video Format
If the mobile media player cannot play your AVI(Xvid/Divx) videos due to whatever reason, you have to convert your videos to the formats that will be supported by your LG IQ. Find a good video converter that can convert your AVI videos to the format LG IQ supports like WMV, MP4, H.264.
AVI (Xvid/Divx) format is widely used like in some video sharing websites and digital camcorders. These AVI videos can be played in computer but how to make them play in DVD players with as good quality as the original video quality?
Convert to DVD Format to Burn to DVD
DVDs use MPEG2 which is a lossy codec and need a lot more bitrate than the source Divx/Xvid AVI video to keep equal quality to the source video. For same quality video, Divx/Xvid gives smaller file size than MPEG2.
Therefore, to maintain as good quality as possible, don’t shrink the converted video size. Try to put too many videos on a disc or make the files too small; you will make the disc not watchable. You’d better put one movie/video on a blank DVD and use a good AVI to DVD converter. In this way, you will get the disc with similar video quality as the original video.
Burn DVD with AVI Video and Get an Xvid/Divx DVD Player
Burning the AVI videos directly to a DVD without quality loss and play it on an Xvid/Divx DVD player which is cheap (about $30). If you have many AVI videos to watch on a DVD player, buying such a DVD player will saves your time and money in the longtime. After all, the size of Xvid/Divx video is much smaller and thus a DVD disc can take more moves on it. Also, you don’t need to spend time to convert the video format.
However, you may meet Xvid/Divx DVD player playback problems; please read here first.
Want to watch your AVI videos on mobile devices so as to enjoy your favorite video anywhere and anytime? Check our video converters.
