all-purpose file converter

[Jeremy Garchow]

We did a piece on the history of Wrigley Field. We were a bit short on footage so we took to the Internet.

We found tremendous “home movie” footage from 1929 on the YouTube.

I used MPEG Streamclip to download the movie and use as a temp until we could track down who owned the footage.

We found them, and we paid them for it. This footage wasn’t available at any stock footage establishment.

There are valid reasons to have to download things from the Internet and use them legally.

[Bill Davis]

First off, “fair use” is likely the single most misunderstood aspect of copyright.

It’s definitions are extremely narrow – extremely specific – and you must meet ALL of the criteria, not just some a use to actually fall under the Fair Use exception.

Stanford University’s web site has a nice section you can access by searching both Stanford and Fair Use that I’d recommend to anyone who’s interested in the topic.

I agree with Jeremy that there certainly are niche situations where grabbing a clip off YouTube can be justified and “legalized” with additional leg work.

But I’m also contending that the ratio of proper use of YouTube sourced material compared to people simply grabbing stuff and using it improperly and/or illegally is probably on the order of a zillion to one.

And in the face of that reality, I stand by my post as a useful warning to the zillion – even if it’s not always perfect advice for the one.

FWIW.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bob Cole]

Another good reason to download videos: tutorials & videos that play choppy when streaming — especially frustrating when the video is about, or relies on, smooth playback. There was a great Red tutorial I wanted to study recently, where the whole point was the relative smoothness of different framerates – except that the choppy streaming made each sample look the same. What about screen capture programs? I used to use Camtasia on the PC, and have recently tried Quicktime Player on the Mac, but can only record the video, not the audio. Am I misusing this program or is that an inherent limitation?

Anyway, back to the topic: file conversion.

For file conversion, the suggestions have been: Super Converter, clip converter.cc, Episode (which flavor?), Adobe Media Encoder, MPEG Streamclip, Compressor, VLC, and Handbrake.

Since file conversion is something I try to do as rarely as possible, but which always seems to come up, I don’t want to spend a lot of money on software, especially if that software requires paid updates to keep it current. So that rules out Episode. MPEG Streamclip is my mainstay; I’ll try various others in the above list.

Thanks very much for the suggestions. One of the reasons I asked for your advice is that when I searched for programs, many of the freebies gave me the creeps – “Will this thing infect my computer?”

[Bill Davis]

Then I’d say hands down you’d want VLC.

It’s broad. Dependable. Amazingly well supported. And reads most formats most of the time and can convert them to enough other formats that you can almost always get a file opened in your system, and send it to someone else in a format they’re likely to be able to use.

It’s very reasonably priced and only after a whole lot of update work, will you eventually face a modestly paid upgrade. The VLC consortium has an open source attitude and has demonstrated broad technical expertise supporting this platform for well more than a decade. The proof of it’s value is that it’s in use all over the planet on all sorts of systems.

I consider it the swiss army knife of video conversion tools.

Of course, you don’t want to find yourself having to dig a ditch with a swiss army knife – but within it’s wheelhouse, I haven’t found anything better.

FWIW.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Michael Garber]

Completely agreed on Adobe Media Encoder. It’s my new favorite (until it doesn’t do something I need it to do ;).

Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company

[Fred Jodry]

Without going into contrasts and comparisons to the other softwares I will emphatically condemn VLC. This is why: It is designed for many types of good conversions which are then ready to be broadcasted over the internet easily. So far, so good. Then the maker, editor, and users of these files all alike, discover that the files, labels, batches, and folders have all been renamed or relabelled so as to be ambiguous and mistakable, or loseable by those who would store or reuse them. Correctly guessing file and format types out of the blue and renaming them or using special software sometimes repairs things but this is ridiculous. When asked by the open- source community to help them design a utility like VLC, Microsoft hoodwinked them out of designing something useful.

[Bill Davis]

[Fred Jodry] “Then the maker, editor, and users of these files all alike, discover that the files, labels, batches, and folders have all been renamed or relabelled so as to be ambiguous and mistakable, or loseable by those who would store or reuse them.”

Well, VLC does not promote itself as a media management tool, which seems like what you’re describing.

If that’s what you want, then ante up the $500 plus for Telestream Episode.

Conversion WITH agile batch re-naming and storage location/system targeting is it’s forte.

Horses for courses.

For those who just want to OPEN and CONVERT their files and figure that naming is a different part of a smart workflow – and feel the VLC price is fair for that (as I do) won’t be upset that you can’t get everything you desire unless you pay what it costs in the open market to get that.

Or is there a tool competitive to VLC at a similar price that does more?

If so, let us know.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Fred Jodry]

Thanks Bill, between your paragraphs and mine we have listed some dos and do nots. So far, my converter to mention again, is my brain and my keyboard (and mouse) with slightly too little in- between. Hopefully there`s something in software between VLC Player which is detrimental and free, and Telestream Episode which is $500 +. This is horrible. It is time to turn off the computer and make live plays!