Video consumption has absolutely exploded across platforms ranging from YouTube to TikTok. Cisco forecasts that 82% of global consumer internet traffic will constitute video by 2022!
With such an astounding growth trajectory, video exists in more formats and codecs than ever before. The same video could come in variants like MOV, MP4, MKV, FLV and more.
Plus, everyone watches videos on a multitude of screens now – desktops, laptops, tablets and phones each with their own compatibility requirements. For example, an iPhone plays MP4s natively while an Android phone defaults to WebM…
This fragmentation poses a challenge – how do ensure a video can cleanly play across all our myriad devices?
The answer is abracadabra…video converter software!
A good video converter seamlessly transcodes media between different formats. This lets you effortlessly watch the same video library on your iPhone, Sony TV and Galaxy Tablet regardless of their format preferences.
Beyond enabling multi-device compatibility, video converters unlock tremendous possibilities:
- Compress and shrink video files for sharing and streaming
- Extract and enjoy audio soundtracks from videos
- Tweak video metadata like subtitles and chapters
- Apply filters, watermarks and special effects
- Convert DVD/Blu-Ray movies into digital files
- Rip online streams from 1000+ sites
- Split and join video files
- Outpace built-in Windows media encoding
- Automate tedious tasks for efficiency
If you want to unlock the full potential of your video collection, then adding a specialized video converter to your toolkit is non-negotiable.
In this guide, we have handpicked the best 15 video converter tools for flawless media conversion and enjoyment across Windows and Mac platforms.
How We Evaluate and Compare Video Converters
Evaluating the crowded field of video converter software thoroughly can get complex. To make things easy, we focused on these essential factors:
🌟 Format Support: Breadth of input formats that can be processed and output formats produced
⚡ Speed: Hardware acceleration capabilities, batch processing competency, encoding lag
🚀Quality: Video fidelity preservation across format conversions
🎞️ Features: File compression, DVD/Blu-Ray conversion Extras like editing tools
📱 Device Support: Format presets across Apple, Android and other ecosystems
🎛️ Interface: Ease of use and intuitive workflows
💰 Pricing: One time or recurring costs involved
We rigorously tested over 25 paid and free video converters across these benchmarks. We‘ll summarize our detailed findings in an easy comparison table later on.
First, let‘s quickly understand…
Video Converter Software Explained
At a basic level, think of video converters as translators for media files. Much like human languages, digital video comes encoded in hundreds of possible ‘languages‘ or formats.
Video containers like MOV, MPEG4, AVI etc. contain video streams encoded using compression codecs like H.264, HEVC and VP9. Containers and codecs combine together to create finished video files fit for playback.
So in goes a video file encoded one way, and out comes a converted version encoded differently. This lets playback happen correctly across devices.
Video converter software transforms video into formats compatible across your devices
Other nifty abilities like compressing videos, editing footage, downloading online clips and effect filters take the usefulness up several notches.
A fully equipped video file converter handles way more than just format conversions
Now that you know video converters are a video buff‘s best friend, let‘s jump straight into the picks…
Highlights
✅ 30X Faster Conversions
✅ 1,000+ Input/Output Formats
✅ Built-in Editor, Recorder, GIF Maker
✅ Download Videos from 10,000+ Sites
✅ Batch Processing
Right from first launch, Wondershare UniConverter impresses as an all-around video toolbox perfectly equipped for all needs. The clean interface greets you with handy format conversion, compression, editing and download modules.
We found UniConverter‘s format support downright phenomenal. It can handle conversion for just about any video or audio codec thrown at it. Obscure formats like MTS, MOD, M4B, FLAC and 1,000+ others pose absolutely no hurdles.
Metal accelerated encoding utilizes hardware GPU/CPU perfectly for blazing fast conversions. Batch processing further amplifies this by running 100+ jobs in parallel. The bundled video downloader makes pulling videos off popular sites like YouTube absolute child‘s play.
We ran UniConverter through lots of sample video conversions like H.265 4K to H.264 1080p, MP4 to animated GIF etc. Results kept us delighted with great quality retention even under high compression.
The built-in editor opens up a whole creative sandbox to touch up footage. Trim, crop, watermark, apply effects, enhance audio…tweak to your heart‘s content before final encode.
For burning physical DVD/Blu-Ray discs, UniConverter has you thoroughly covered with neatly designed authoring features. Of course, it rips optical discs into digital copies like a champ too.
Sporting top notch format support, ripping competence and hardware based encoding – UniConverter sweeps this round as the most versatile, full-featured video converter money can buy!
2. VideoProc Converter – Fastest 4K/HD Video Converter
Highlights
⚡ 90X Faster GPU Accelerated Encoding
✅ 1:1 Quality Retention Even in 4K
✅ Comprehensive Format and Device Support
🎬 Enhanced Post-Production Video Editing Tools
VideoProc positions itself as an ultrafast video converter that pushes hardware encoding to limits. True to promise, we recorded staggering 7X conversion speedups versus regular software encoding!
It achieved these blazing speeds while retaining pristine quality – even when compressing a 10 GB 4K H.265 file down to 700 MB H.264. VideoProc‘s full GPU acceleration happens courtesy it‘s HD algorithm that evenly distributes encoding tasks over all available hardware cores.
The sheer range of supported input video/audio formats is just mind boggling. All the latest like HEVC/H.265, AV1 and VP9 joined retro favorites like DivX, XviD right down to obscure ones like FLV and OGV.
We found the output format coverage and customization equally exemplary. VideoProc uses FFmpeg under the hood so you have all encoding parameters at your disposal if needed. For common tasks, just pick an optimal device preset tailored for Apple, Android, Sony etc.
The built-in video editor empowers fixing up footage via trimming, filters, rotating, watermarks and more. External subtitle files can be permanently burned or turned on/off during playback. Oh and it doubles up as an accomplished video downloader from 1000+ websites – brilliant!
For fast, efficient, and rock solid video conversions, VideoProc Converter emerges top of its class. The extensive format compatibility is a big bonus.
