Is there a good alternative to Videora iPod Converter?
- by Richard
I use Videora to convert my videos (in DivX/XviD format) to something I can play on my iPod Classic.
I really dislike it. It's clunky, riddled with adverts, sometimes doesn't convert properly (the infamous "invalid public atom" error - see Google for more) and has a UI that truly stinks.
On the upside, it's free, accepts a list of video files (via the oddly hard to find "1-click convert" button) and just gets on with the converting as it already knows the correct settings for my iPod. One final nice touch is that once they are converted, it'll automatically upload them into iTunes.
Are there any alternatives which have all the upsides but none of the downsides? Bonus points if they can set the metadata in iTunes correctly for TV shows (season, show, episode) and delete the converted file afterwards (as my iTunes settings means that a copy is made elsewhere).
I've looked at a bunch of applications (handbrake, virtualdub, mediacoder, format factory, any video converter, convertxtodvd) but many of them fail the "just select a list of files and get on with converting" test - let alone all the other features I want. I have no desire to individually set the video size of each file or the codec or the post-processing options.
I'm currently using the command line version of HandBrake (handbrakecli) and a hand-written DOS batch file to go through every file in a folder and convert it. It does most of what I want, just not in a very slick way.
Can anyone recommend anything better? It needs to work on Windows 7 and be free.
