HandBrake

This software comes in hand, when you want to upload videos to a mobile phone or media player. It allows to transcode easily to mp4 format with a good control of options, encoder to use, resizing...

Here is my settings file (user_presets.xml), which I use to convert files to display them in my phone:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ArrayOfPreset xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<Preset>
  <Level>0</Level>
  <Name>Mobile phone</Name>
  <Query> -f mp4 -w 400 -e ffmpeg -q 0.5 -a 1 -E faac -B 160 -R 0 -6 stereo -D 1 -m -v </Query>
</Preset>
</ArrayOfPreset>

My settings are: ffmpeg encoding, mp4 container format, aac stereo sound, 50% constant quality, resize to 400px width. Note that to be able to create a preset under Vista you need to start the application with administrative rights.

Homepage: http://handbrake.fr/

Platform: cross-platform

Version: 0.9.3 (Nov 23, 2008)

License: open source freeware