Article Source: paininthetech.com
RAD Video Tools is a piece of software that makes the conversion of QuickTime videos to AVI fast and easy. The best part is, it’s free!
The RAD Video Tools consists of a conversion program that will quickly convert QuickTime video to a multitude of different formats, most importantly .AVI. This article will cover:
- a quick overview of how to use this software
- conversion format comparison
- extra features
How to Use the Software
Obviously the first step will be to download the software at RAD View’s Site. Install, and open the application. Here you will be able to enter several file types, but this article is geared towards QuickTime conversion. So select your .MOV file and click ‘Convert a file’.
Now select the ‘Output type’, here we’ll use ‘AVI file’, but the list gives a foretaste of the extra features section.
Then click ‘Convert’. Another window will be pop up requesting the Compressor to be used for the output video. The details of each option will be discussed shortly.
Click ‘OK’ to begin conversion.
Conversion Format Comparison
The original test video I used was 10.2 MB in size, and contained no sound. I then ran the same file through all of the compression types. The compression type, time, and output file sizes are below. Keep in mind that these tests were run on a Toshiba Satellite Laptop with a Pentium III processor, 196MB of RAM, running Windows 2000…not a stellar machine by any standards.
Conversion Ratios:
If you look closely through the list, you’ll see not all of the compression formats are listed. That is because they didn’t work for me, for one reason or another, probably due to missing codec’s.
Extra Features
The RAD Video Tools offer features well beyond the scope of this article. A few noteworthy features include:
- Outputting to image files (e.g. BMP, GIF, JPEG, TGA, TIFF, PCX, and PNG). Although this process is extremely time intensive, it will convert each frame into that file type. This is a much better approach to retrieve good quality individual frames from a movie, instead of taking a screenshot of a paused video. If you’re only looking for a specific shot, I recommend cutting the video down to the shortest form possible to save on processing time.
- “Tweakability” of the converted video. RAD allows the following features to take place while the conversion is occurring:
- Cropping of the frame size
- Selecting the beginning and ending frames
- Adjusting contrast and brightness
- Changing the quality of the sound
Several of the compressions also allowed for a manual quality setting. In the above list some examples are given. This is particularly nice if you want to get an internet/streaming video down to the smallest acceptable size.
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