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Converting Video
You may remember that a few months ago I took a look at a product that had been developed to aid the conversion and transfer of multimedia content from one format to another. Unfortunately I was less than impressed with the results I was able to achieve with this title which shall remain nameless. Now a competitive product, offering similar functionality, has appeared. This product, from Avanquest, is entitled TransferMy Video.
As its title indicates, TransferMy Video sets out to do just that; it takes video content and converts it into a compatible format for a designated device before transferring the content to the chosen designation. While hardly offering the most appealing or decorative interface, TransferMy Video gives the user a choice of working with an Easy or Advanced mode interface; either of which are more than capable of delivering the required results.
You start off my selecting your chosen device from a comprehensive list of models supported by this software. Included in this list (and there are many more than I have space to list) are devices developed by companies such as Apple, Archos, BenQ, BlackBerry, Creative, iRiver, LG, Microsoft, Nintendo, Nokia, Palm, SanDisk and Sony. Selecting the appropriate company brings up a list of the various models that are supported. In some cases you might need to download a necessary codec – this will be carried out automatically.
The Easy Mode interface is divided into three areas which cover the source, destination and a preview of the conversion as it takes place. Given a choice of selecting to convert a DVD (presumably of the home-made variety as we would not want to infringe on any copyright issues with a commercially produced disk.) or a video clip existing on your hard disk, you can use standard Windows protocols to browse and pinpoint the source. The Advanced mode interface adds the capability of targeting specific folders and listing all appropriate content along with a thumbnail image, title, length and creation date.
In either case you are limited to selecting a single clip for conversion. Once this process has been completed you can then select another clip. It would have been preferable to have been able to create a list of files for conversion in batch mode.
Once the conversion process has begun, you will be shown a preview (while Advanced mode offers a thumbnail view, the preview screen is much larger in Easy mode) along with a progress bar (the colour scheme of white on light grey is, perhaps, not the most sensible as it makes viewing rather difficult) and a time estimation of how much more there is to be processed. The time required will depend upon processor speed plus the original and destination format of the conversion. For example on the test system, converting an MPEG file of 27 minute into a format acceptable by the Archos 404 device took 44 minutes yet a 107-minute AVI file conversion for the iPod Classic was completed in 49 minutes.
Once the conversion has been completed then the transfer operation kicks into operation. Depending upon the chosen device, the transfer process does vary slightly. The TransferMy Video software makes use of iTunes for transferring content to your iPod. However with Archos, you will need to select the appropriate folder on the mobile media player and then launch the transfer operation. It was noticeable that this latter approach was far quicker than the iTunes synchronisation method.
You can download a trial version of this software from the Avanquest website. This version will allow you full access to the various options but does overlay any converted videos with a watermark indicating the software’s trial status. Purchasing the product costs a reasonable £19.56. System requirements are a Pentium 4 1.0GHz, 512MB of RAM, 3GB of available hard disk space, support for DirectX 0 running Windows XP and later.
http://www.avanquest.com/UK/software/transfer-my-video-114671
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