Reaching out to STW techies

What’s the best free software which i can download to convert XviD, AVI and other other popular formats into AppleTV friendly MP4 files

Thanks! 🙂

I use handbrake for that I think

I use smart convertor on the mac.

If you have an iPad or iphone and a Mac don’t bother converting and use StreamToMe. Miles easier.

Handbrake will do anything – but re-encodes the whole movie frame by frame, so is very slow (depending how powerful your machine is, and the quality of the source and target files). Can take hours.

Most “source” files I use are MKVs, which don’t need a full re-encode to get to MP4/M4V, the just need a “re-mux” which is essentially re-packaging the file, and only takes a few minutes. I use Mp4Tools, which I like, but lots of people use Subler. They are both free.

a couple of caveats: for re-muxing to work, they have to be encoded using the right codec h264, and the sound has to be AAC instead of DTS (from memory – could be wrong).

The biggest ball-ache for me is forced subs. If anyone has figured-out a foolproof way to spot these prior to encode/remux, I would be extremely interested!

I use Handbrake, been doing so for a few years. You can queue multiple transformations up and run them overnight. You can chose various output formats so if you only want to view on a phone for example the file will be smaller. For example today I compressed a DVD I’d ripped from 8gb to 1.5gb on the universal format which is good enough for a large flatscreen hd tv. FYI use RipIt (first 10rips free but it’s cheap app enough anyway) and VLC to play stuff on Mac or AirPlay to Apple TV after iTunes import.

@Barfink I have a lot of movies with subtitles in fact I add subtitles to many movies which don’t have them in the source file, what’s your problem ? If a movie has forced subs I don’t think you can remove them, Handbrake has the option to burn in subtitles or have them as an option (my choice typically)

Thanks guys 0- loaded Handbrake and its quality!

A little slow, but as someone above said, you can queue and leave overnight

Thanks for the advice all 🙂

+1 For Handbrake!

If you’ve got the right gear Stream To Me is really miles easier as it converts on the fly when you want to watch something. I used to use Handbrake.

+1 again for handbrake. It just works with no faffing around, which is what I want from software.

Hope you guys don’t mind if I piggy-back off of this post. It’s related but not the same type of conversion…Basically, I need to convert vhs tapes and figured someone here might have a few suggestions. I’m not the best with all this tech stuff but it seems I have two options: I can get some conversion software or go to a video/camera store and have them convert things for me but it seems that isn’t the easiest service to find anymore…gosh I feel old-fashioned! Anyways, they’re old family tapes so I’d really like to salvage the video. Any ideas or software recommendations? Thx!

We don’t mind you piggy-backing off this thread. We do, however, mind you astroturfing, so I’ve removed the link from your post.

We do, however, mind you astroturfing,

Not to sound naive but what’s astroturfing?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

Creating an account, posting a couple of on-topic replies and then going “hey, I’ve found this great software / product, here’s a link!!!” is a common tactic of spammers.

I gave you the benefit of the doubt, but I really couldn’t see any reason why you’d see a need to post a link back where you did other than for advertising purposes.

Wierd, I logged on to ask a very similar question, and there you all were jabbering away about it.

Looks like I’ll give Handbrake a go at converting the movie files I have to iPad friendly forms.

Thank you all!

oops! Sorry, I just did a random google to find something (some software) I thought would work. It’s quite an expensive product so I’m basically looking for a cheaper version that I can plug right into my old camcorder. So is it okay to mention a software but not link to it? I saw lots of ppl mention handbrake…

Still looking for suggestions for converting vhs tapes if anyone could help 🙂 Sorry for all this confusion!