eyetv  ffmpeg  handbrake  MPEGStreamClip  mplayer/mencoder  vlc 

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

A quick summary of apps I find essential for editing and converting video.

• EyeTV – for recording DVB broadcasts. OK this one isn’t free, but I’m not aware of any equivalent free app.


• MPEGStreamClip – for editing, and a bit of conversion. It’s editor is much more accurate than EyeTV’s. (Windows version also available)


• VLC – can play a wider range of video formats than anything other app I’ve found. It can also do conversion, and act as a streaming server… all of which requires a much more detailed post sometime. (Windows & Linux versions also available).


• Handbrake – for ripping DVDs and converting to MP4 or DivX. (Windows version also available)


• ffmpeg – general purpose video converter, covered in many of the examples on this site. Also ffmpegX, a Mac GUI for it, although I’ve never really got on very well with that – not sure why, just personal taste probably.


• mplayer – another “play anything” player, and MPlayer OSX. This is one of the few tools which can play the horrible RealMedia format, and can capture Real streams from the web. The other thing I use it for is ripping individual titles from DVDs (more on that another time).

punyvid 

Saturday, October 25, 2008

As you may know, iSquint has been discontinued and released as source code with the new name of PunyVid. I've compiled it and you can download it here. Seems to work OK for me, but I haven't tested it that heavily. It's a simple app for converting video into MP4, suitable for playing on an iPod/iPhone.

For some reason I couldn't get the other app (FilmRedux, formerly known as VisualHub) to work properly. I'll try that another time.

punyvid 

Monday, October 20, 2008

I just read that Techspansion is closing down, and open-sourcing the applications. I never really used any of these, as they weren’t free, and I felt that I could do most of what they did with ffmpeg anyway. But from the trial versions, they looked pretty good. I guess that to begin with, you’ll need to be reasonably technically minded to compile and use them. But presumably someone will create a binary distribution to make them more widely available. Hey, I might even try it myself.

And as noted on one of the O’Reilly blogs, the way the developer has handled the discontinuation of these products is hugely commendable.