This guide will show you how to compress your videos using our video conversion software. This tutorial will work for WMV, AVI, MPEG, FLV, DIVX, XVID, ASF, MOV and VOB videos.

This example video compression exercise started with an 1.81MB MPEG file, after it was only 962KB!

Tools required; FXBear Video Converter

Step 1; Open the software, and locate your files/folders to be converted

Step 2; Select & Add your desired folder to the convert list

Step 3; Select output format.

• Click desired format.
• Change outputt video settings; by default set to same as source
• To compress your videos, select lower bitrates than the original source video uses. So for example you want to compress an MPEG video. The source MPEG file has a bitrate of 4250, you will want to select a lower bitrate (e.g. 768) and then select a lower audio bitrate. We’d recommend not changing the frame-size or frame-rate unless you know what your doing.

Step 5; Click the ‘CONVERT NOW’ button and let the software do it’s job.

Job done! You will be able to find your new MPEG-1 video in the output folder you selected (Desktop as default)

This example video compression exercise started with an 1.81MB MPEG file, after it was only 962KB!

This guide will show you how to convert your exsisting AVI videos to MPEG using our video conversion software.

Tools required; FXBear Video Converter

Step 1; Open the software, and locate your files/folders to be converted

Step 2; Select & Add your desired folder to the convert list

Step 3; Select output format.

• Click desired format. We choose MPEG-1.
• Change outputt video settings; by default set to same as source

Step 4; Click the ‘CONVERT NOW’ button and let the software do it’s job.

Job done! You will be able to find your new MPEG-1 video in the output folder you selected (Desktop as default)

This guide will show you how to Batch Convert your favourite MP3 files to WMA. This guide is for all those WMA lovers who wish to convert their media to MP3 in batch.

Tools required; FXBear Audio Converter

Step 1; Open the software, and locate your files/folders to be converted

Step 2; Select & Add your desired folder to the convert list

Step 3; Select output format.

• Click desired format [AAC, AC3, AIFF, AMR, MP2, MPC, OGG, WAV, WMA] etc. We choose WMA.
• Select Windows Media Audio Profile to convert to.

Step 4; Click the Start button and let the software do it’s job. Batch conversion jobs will take longer to be processed, this depends on the amount of files in list.

Job done! You will be able to find your new WMA files in the output folder you selected (My Documents as default)

This guide will show you how to convert your exsisting FLV videos to MPEG using our video conversion software.

Tools required; FXBear Video Converter

Step 1; Open the software, and locate your files/folders to be converted

Step 2; Select & Add your desired folder to the convert list

Step 3; Select output format.

• Click desired format. We choose MPEG-1.
• Change outputt video settings; by default set to same as source

Step 4; Click the ‘CONVERT NOW’ button and let the software do it’s job.

Job done! You will be able to find your new MPEG-1 video in the output folder you selected (Desktop as default)

The AVI or Audio Video Interleave is perhaps the most widely known video container format in the PC industry and is a good specimen for an audio and video format standard of the 20^th century. It is a special instance of the Resource Interchange File Format or RIFF in its file structure that can carry audio and video data in almost any uncompressed form or compression codec such as Intel Real Time (Indeo), MPEG4, RealVideo, Motion JPEG, Cinepak, Full Frame (uncompressed), among others.

A short history

Introduced by Microsoft in November of 1992 for its Video for Windows, the AVI became the de facto standard for audio and video formats for almost a decade. Almost all websites that offer video downloads have them in the AVI container format.

As the name suggests, it contains both audio and video streaming data allowing for synchronous playback of audio and video data – one of the first in the PC industry that has gained near universal acceptance. Like DVD’s VOB container file formats, the AVI can support multiple data streaming of audio and video – a feature rarely used n PC application. There are also AVI files called AVI 2.0 that were developed by the Matrox OpenDML group in 1996 and were eventually supported by Microsoft.

Video codec supported

The AVI container format supports virtually all video codec with the proper filter support like the VFW. However, H.264/AVC can be problematic due to its limited B-frame support.

Dislikes about it

The AVI has significant overhead data that makes its file size unnecessarily large compared to other container formats when using the popular MPEG4 codecs like Xvid and DivX. It also does not support the B-Frames feature of the modern MPEG4 though hacks abound to overcome this, further increasing file size and causing incompatibility issues with some players.

While the AVI container file can also house the highly efficient H.264 codec, it is considered unsuitable due to compression hacks that need to be implemented. In short, AVI format is considered obsolete. But despite these limitations, the format remains popular among internet uses for purposes of file-sharing due to its portability among video editing software. Installing the ffdshow filters in DirectShow and Windows Media players often overcome incompatibility problems.

In mid-2005, DivX, Inc. released its own container file format in the DivX Media Format with the .divx extension. It succeeds the older AVI + DivX combo. However, this is just an enhanced AVI format based on the same RIFF structure and has received little or no support from the file-sharing communities where the DivX codec was once popular. It is interesting to note that the rival derivative Xvid codec has become the more popular codec of choice among file-sharing groups.

There’s a company called DivX, Inc, formerly the DivXNetworks, Inc. that introduced the DivX family of video codecs. Made extremely popular because of its ability to produce high quality video using lossy MPEG4 Part2 compression or MPEG4 ASP, DivX has cemented itself as one of the most popular multimedia codec for the home market.

DivX is known to create a balance between quality and file size with its highly efficient compression abilities. And because of that, it s one of the codecs used for ripping where audio and video are copied from a source to the PC hard disk for archiving and transcoding.

The commercial DivX competes with Microsoft’s Video for Windows in WMV, Apple’s QuickTime in the MOV and RealNetwork’s Real Video in the RMM file formats. An open source version released by Xvid solutions in 2001 is the Xvid file format.

While DivX has long been renowned for its excellent video quality, its free and open source equivalent Xvid today offers comparable quality, also based on MPEG-4 Part 2 (MPEG-4 ASP). In a series of subjective quality tests at Doom9.org, the DivX codec has been successively beaten by Xvid every year since 2003.^[11]

Confusion clarified

DivX are two different things from two different companies. One is DIVX created by Circuit City, a US electronics retail giant that attempted to market a DVD rental system that used special players and discs. And the other is the DivX multimedia codec trademarked and marketed by DivX, Inc. which is actually a reference to the failed Circuit City system.

A short history

DivX roots can be traced back to 1998 as a hacked version of Microsoft’s MPEG4 version 3 which is inferior to the MPEG4 that we know today. It was a French hacker Jerome Rota who, rather than modify his video resume which could not play on the new Windows Media Player at that time, reverse-engineered the MPEG4 format together with a German Hacker Max Morice to come up with an MPEG4 format encapsulated in AVI instead of the ASF it originally had. It only took them a week. Between 1998 and 2002, the DVD hacking community had independent hackers enhance the format that later came to have the Divx with a smiley emoticon J attached as version 3.0.

In 2000, Rota was hired by Jorda Greenhall to form a company called DivXNetworks (later renamed to DivX, Inc.) based in the French Riviera. The association resulted in the OpenDivX codec a year later. Its source code was open to anyone and could be downloaded from the projectmayo.com website. The following year, the two left for San Diego and developed the OpenDivX software to become DivX version 4.0. Other developers took the Encore2 software to enhance the open source OpenDivX to arrive at the rival Xvid format.maintained by Xvid Solutions, Inc.

The DivX Company continued to enhance the DivX software that in 2002 has taken on the fifth version. By 2004, the features of the DivX format are as complete as we know it today. In May 2007, the Windows Vista version DivX 6.6 for the PC and the Mac was released.

The advantages and benefits of using DivX

DivX found itself at the heart of video piracy in the late 90s as its format became widely popular for ripping copyrighted DVD materials for bootleg replication and distribution. A number of generic DVD players as well as branded ones are claiming to play DivX materials

What’s so appealing about the format is that it’s free. Same with the software players you can use to play it with. It belongs to the open source community together with Xvid offering competitive if not better quality.

Gaining a much wider use on the internet these days, the FLV or Flash Video file format is the format of choice in major internet sites like YouTube, Yahoo and Google Video. Previously known as the Macromedia Flash Player file, Flash Video can be played on the Adobe Flash Player as a format proprietary to the maker. It can be viewed on most operating platform, notably Windows and Mac, using the downloadable Adobe Flash player or a plug-in application for the browser. Third party multimedia players can also play them with the ffdshow filter support installed with the application.

Video support

The Flash player from Adobe is a multimedia and application player that plays FLV files from SWF files created by the associated Adobe Flash authoring tools as well as third party tools. As a browser add-on or plug-in, flash video players can be embedded in webpages to be viewed in browsers with the plug-in. This is what happens with the YouTube site.

The Flash Video files contain video bit streams which are slightly off from the H.263 video standard called as Sorensen Spark . Flash Player 8 and newer revisions support the playback of On2 TrueMotion VP6 video bit streams that can provide better visual quality than Sorenson Spark, especially at lower video bitrates. However, it is computationally more elaborate and may not run as well on certain older PCs. Recent trial versions of Flash Player 9 include support for H.264 video standard (also known as MPEG4 Part 10 or AVC) which while more computationally demanding provides significantly better quality/bitrate performance.

The FLV file format supports two versions of a so called ’screenshare’ codec designed for Screencasts. Both formats are bitmap based and can be lossy by reducing color depths lower than 8 bits for compression using zlib. The second version is only playable in Flash Player 8 and newer.

Audio in FLV files is often done in the mp3 format. However, FLV files recorded from the PC microphone use the proprietary Nellymoser codec. The most recent beta versions of Flash Player 9 support a number of profiles under AAC.

Most multimedia players based on the FFmpeg libraries can play back the FLV video format. Any player which plays back QuickTime formats also can but after installation of the required FLV software component. Below are some other media players that do:

• VLC multimedia player
• Mplayer (with FFmpeg)
• Xine (with FFmpeg)
• RealPlayer
• Any player which can use the ffdshow (based on FFmpeg) DirectShow codecs:
  • Media Player Classic
  • Windows Media Player
  • Windows Media Center (requires some registry hack)

Flash plans

Just recently, Adobe announced Update 3 of the Flash Player (currently in beta) that now will support the MPEG4 Part 10 standard, audio compressed using AAC (MPEG-4 Part 3), the MP4, M4V, M4A, 3GP and MOV multimedia container formats (MPEG-4 Part 14), 3GPP specification (MPEG-4 Part 17) which is a standardized subtitle format and parsing support for the ID3 equivalent of iTunes stored n the metadata. Adobe also will be gradually phasing out the proprietary FLV format to the standard MP4 format owing to functional limits within the FLV structure when streaming H.264.

Advantage of using FLV

More of a letdown than an advantage, Flash video files are embedded in SWF files when authoring from an associated Adobe software tool. The FLV needs to be decoded from the SWF file for playback to happen in the associated FLV player. Editing the video requires having the original SWF file or having it rebuilt.

FLV files have become popular because of the YouTube phenomenon belatedly copied by Google and Yahoo websites. Other than that, there’s really not much sense using FLV format or other formats that have already made their mark in the home PC entertainment industry. That should be pretty much obvious as YouTube is expected to convert their format into QuickTime formats soon enough to accommodate the huge demand for online video expected to be generated with Apple’s promise for YouTube access on its iPhone.

Everyone who is acquainted with running Windows will be familiar with the Windows Media Video or WMV video file format. Simply put, the WMV is a video format that uses lossy compression algorithm proprietary to the Windows operating platform. It is developed by Microsoft as a competitor to the RealVideo multimedia platform.

As a codec, the WMV is encapsulated or contained in the ASF (Advanced System Format) file container format. The file with extension .wmv is precisely an ASF file that contains a proprietary Microsoft video codec for Windows. Interestingly enough, WMV can also be contained in the AVI file container format.

A short history

The very first version of the format, WMV7 was released in 1999 based on the MPEG4 Part2 as implemented by Microsoft. It was among the first video codec that supported constant and variable video bitrates. Since then, newer versions have been developed to keep up with competition culminating in the WMV9 specification released.in 2003. It has adopted much of the specification of professional video formats with support for frame interpolation, interlaced video and non-square pixels.

In 2006, the SMPTE group adopted it as its standard SMPTE 421M or VC1 that became one of the mandatory video formats for the emerging high resolution HD DVD and Blu-Ray formats for Home Theater entertainment. It supports both 720p and 1080p video resolutions and multichannel audio.

One of its features that made movie studios accept it is its support for the Digital Rights Management or DRM . It does provide encryption protection that studios are adamant about when releasing titles from their catalogues as well as new ones. But while WMV video codec itself does not contain DRM, the ASF container file that encapsulates the WMV video stream does. Windows Media DRM is standard in Windows PCs using the new Windows Vista.

The Benefits of using WMV

The WMV codec is the most recognizable video codec format. Its competitors, apart from RM of RealVideo, include MPEG4 AVC, DivX and Xvid. The MPEG4 AVC is the other high resolution format developed for HD DVD and Blu-Ray.

Understandably, WMV is the mandatory video format for Portable Media Center devices that run special versions of the Windows operating system. They include the Microsoft Zune that competes with the Apple iPod, the Xbox 360 gaming console and mobile phones using the Windows Mobile platform. Needless to say, it is the default video format for the Windows Media Player that comes bundled with the Windows operating system.

Video player software that can play WMV files includes PowerDVD, Mplayer, VLC MediaPlayer and the Media Player Classic. Interestingly enough, RealPlayer against which the WMV file was meant to compete also plays WMV files.

Video quality of the WMV9 is claimed to be superior to MPEG4 and about three times better than MPEG2, the codec used for the home video standard DVD. That’s what Microsoft claims. But independent tests have not confirmed this.

Dislikes about WMV

The newer WMV9 and WMV HD which uses the WMV codec have received unwanted criticisms from the press and mostly from users. It has more to do with the issue of DRM which has never really grown on users. Restoring licenses for DRM protected WMV files in other PC is problematic and these same files can’t even be played when downloaded on Zune devices. The standard Windows Media DRM systems apparently are not supported in Zune.

To those who often use the QuickTime video player software, whether in a Mac or Windows PC, the file extension .MOV should be quite familiar. It’s a file format extension developed by Apple as its multimedia format of choice for its QuickTime environment. QuickTime is widely used in iTunes and is the default file format for the QuickTime player application as well as the emerging Safari platform for mobile devices. The format is quite popular in many websites for audio or video streaming. Thanks to the QuickTime multimedia player software that many have downloaded from the net as a freeware, the format has achieved universal reach and acceptance in Windows multimedia applications.

QuickTime’s MOV file is not a codec (code/decode) format like MPEG4 but is a container video file format. As the term suggests, a MOV file can contain a number of both video codec file formats like H-263,H-264/AVC, WMV, and MPEG4, to mention the more often used video codecs, and audio codecs like Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, WMA, AC3, DTS and AMR, to mention some. Unlike other popular container file formats like AVI, 3GP, the MOV container format supports the most number of video and audio codecs through its internal codec and sound manager core engines that the others don’t have.

A short history of the format

In was in December of 1991 when Apple released the first commercial QuickTime platform and its associated MOV file format for the Mac system 6 operating system. MAC users were enthralled to see the famous 1984 apple TV ad played on the MAC workstation – the first for any desktop computer. (It’s interesting to note that Windows would not be releasing its video for Windows platform until a year later, in November 1992.)

Succeeding versions improved on the MOV files and about the same time that Video for Windows was launched in 1992, it contained the Cinepak vector quantizing video codec called Compact Video for its version 1.5 that swiftly endeared itself among Mac users for being the first video on the desktop to run 30 frames per second at a resolution of 320 x 240. Thereafter, Apple released QuickTime version 1.6 for Windows in the last quarter of 1993 to give Windows PC users a better alternative to the Windows native video application.

These days, QuickTime is now on its 7^th version with 7.1.06 supporting Windows XP and 7.2 destined as the first version for the Windows Vista. The version 7 family now has the Core Audio and the core Video that allows high resolution H.264/AVC and Mpeg4 video codec to be played

Audio and Video support

The MOV file container format can contain the following audio, video and graphics files and codecs.

Audio

• Apple Lossless
• AIFF or Audio Interchange File Format
• CDDA or 16-bit CD audio
• MIDI
• MP3 or MPEG-1 Layer 3 Audio
• MPEG-4 AAC Audio (.m4a, .m4b, .m4p)
• QCELP or Qualcomm PureVoice
• AU Audio from SUN
• ULAW and ALAW Audio
• WAV or Waveform Audio

Video

• 3GPP & 3GPP2 file formats
• AVI file format
• BMP or Bitmap codec and file format
• DV file (DV NTSC/PAL and DVC Pro NTSC/PAL codecs)
• Flash & FlashPix files
• Animated GIF files
• H.261, H.263 and H.264 codecs
• JPEG, Photo JPEG, and JPEG-2000 codecs and file formats
• MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4/AVC codecs and file formats
• QTZ or Quartz Composer Composition for Mac OS X only
• Other video codecs: Apple Video, Cinepak, Component Video, Graphics, and Planar RGB
• Other still image formats: PNG, TIFF, and TGA

Benefits of MOV file container

The MOV file under QuickTime lends itself better to editing the video file than its competing media containers from Windows. In 1998, ISO (International Standards Organization) approved the MOV file format to form the basis of the MPEG-4 Part 14 (.mp4) file container standard so that by 2000, MPEG-4 Part 14 has became an industry standard, first appearing in 2002 with QuickTime version 6. As such, the MPEG-4 container can capture and edit, unlike in earlier MPEG iterations.

MP4 is the default file container format for MPEG4, and both MOV and MP4 containers can use the Mpeg4 video codec as they are interchangeable in the QuickTime environment. But it should be noted that MP4 has better international hardware support among DVD players, mobile devices and game consoles such as the Sony PSP. On the Software side, most video platforms like Video for Windows and Direct Show do contain better codec support like parsers for the MP4 format than for MOV.

On the otherhand, when using the QuickTime platform, MOV files can now support multichannel audio while MP4 files can only be played in stereo.

QuickTime is integral to the MAC operating platform and is optional in the Windows platform. But increasingly more Windows applications are using QuickTime when displaying audio and video information. Many PC encyclopedic software applications use QuickTime and its default MOV file support when playing multimedia files.

During the earlier days of development in video and audio compression, it was the MPEG, or the Motion Picture Experts Group which was in charge with coming up with standards to keep up with the video requirements as they came out. Standards such as MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 were developed. However, there were some instances where these standards had to be tweaked to accommodate variations to the mediums they supported.

An example of this sort of variation is the VOB file format. If you look at some files contained in a DVD movie, chances are you would see a few with the extension .vob. The term VOB is actually short for ‘Video OBject’, and if you compare it to the MPEG-2 standard, you will see that their encoding schemes are quite similar. In fact, if you take a VOB video file and change its extension to .mpeg or simply .mpg, you would still be able to run it.

The VOB file format is mostly used in DVDs. Unlike VCDs which contain just the video, you will probably notice that DVD Video manufacturers add a decorative opening menu for viewers to go through prior to playing the actual movie. Also you will probably see another feature for those who are hard of hearing or the subtitle option. The menu, subtitles, and other additional features integrated into the DVD are all contained in the .VOB file.

These .vob files are usually grouped, depending on the features of the DVD. These groups are called ‘titles’ and oftentimes the feature presentation is located under one of these titles, further truncated per ‘chapter’. The structure of files with .vob extensions is standard. When you explore a DVD, you will always find one file with the VOB video format which is named ‘Video_TS.vob’. This file contains the first pieces of information that the viewer will see when playing the DVD. Menus and opening trailers are usually contained in this particular .vob file.

Furthermore, you will notice other .vob files containing title and section information. These names adhere to standards, so it would be easy for the system and the user to understand. For example, the file VTS_02_1.vob can be interpreted as a file part of the Video Title Set, allocated to Title 2, Section 1 in particular. Additionally, the last section in say, title 2, would be named VTS_02_n.vob.

In a DVD, a VOB file is usually accompanied with supplementary files. Files with the .ifo extension have information regarding the specific attributes and options of the content of a VOB file. This sort of information comprises of but is not limited to subtitles, aspect ratio, and languages. These IFO files have backups, which are also files with the aptly designated file extension .bup. These files are responsible for the intricate presentations which are shown every time a DVD is played.

With the growing capabilities of computers, many people have resorted to watching DVD videos in computers instead of a hardware player hooked up to a TV. This is made possible due to the compatibility of the VOB video files in the DVDs. During the earlier days, people took advantage of watching DVDs by going through the trick of changing a VOB video file’s extension mentioned earlier.

Nowadays, it is standard that the media player software is able to play DVD Video or VOB files in particular. If a consumer happens to be using one of the many Windows operating system versions, its built-in Media Player should have no problem in opening DVDs and their VOB files, just as long as the DVD-ROM is calibrated with the disc’s region. If a person is using a Mac, it is just as easy to watch DVD videos on Apple DVD Player software.

The versatility of the VOB file format makes it easy to convert into other video file formats. There are many video converters available on the internet, capable of truly converting a file with the .vob extension to a legitimate MPEG or MPG file, going beyond the simple changing of its extension.

These video converters are able to compress the huge-sized, high-quality VOB files into simpler and smaller videos compatible for viewing on mobile devices. This means a person can purchase a DVD Video and convert a good portion of VOB files to be copied and stored on a palmtop device which is capable of playing videos. The fact that VOB files can be played by virtually every conventional video player and converter opens many opportunities for anyone wants seamless video options.