Grant asked me a question a few weeks ago and I thought I would share the answer
Do you know of any good free apps that can convert DVD video to Xvid or DivX? I have a Media player (think it only supports DivX) that is filling up and I need to convert to smaller formats
I have tried a few different programs and I am not totally happy with any of them. Among the ones I have tried are
WinFF and MediaCoder and both are open source and thus free
WinFF is a simple program to change file types. A couple of clicks and you are done. It doesn’t really support whole DVDs or FLV video from websites (like YouTube). But it’s handy if you want a simple program to change say an Apple QuickTime MOV file to DivX or similar
MediaCoder is a much more sophisticated program with many, many options. For the casual or new user it can therefore be very complicated. However it is powerful and offers lots of options.
Both WinFF and MediaCoder use the FFmpeg engine for decoding and are free and open source.
For ripping DVD’s to alternative files like DivX I use DVDFab with the mobile option. It has lots of settings for converting DVDs to formats for your phone, iPod or portable device. It is also my program of choice for DVD copying and back-up. Unfortunately this program is not free. You should also be careful when dealing with copyrighted materials.
To back up my opinions and provide a few alternatives here's a link to a newsletter I read a while ago
http://www.windowssecrets.com/2008/09/25/04-Converters-maximize-your-video-file-options
Windows Secrets newsletter is pretty good. There's a free version or you can get the paid version for $1 US (or however much you want to pay). Highly recommended reading!
When you are converting files for a specific device or purpose be careful what codec you select for the conversion. Grant will probably find his media centre can play at least some version of Xvid and/or DivX codec but it may be an older version. I have 2 different brand DVD players that play DivX and they play Xvid too. You just need to experiment a bit with what version of the codec you rip/compress to so for best results convert to the format that the player supports. Read the manual for the media centre and download the DivX codec version it specifies for maximum compatibility.
Being able to play the compressed files directly is great as you can fit lots of files on a single disc and still watch them in good quality. I have whole seasons of a TV show on a single DVD. Obviously you need a special kind of DVD player for this but they are pretty common these days.
The next question arises – what if I have a pile of compressed video, maybe from your camcorder or TV shows you have recorded, and you want to watch them or share with friends who don’t have a special DVD player?
You need to turn them back into a DVD of course and I will give you a list of programs to try for this too in a separate post.
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