“Oh, you can convert this right?” 

photo credit: pablosanz

Have you ever been in that bind where your client has some miserably obscure or seldom used video format? It happens, and maybe it’s a .DAT Video CD file, or an .ASF, but without fail someone will ask you to convert something into something else – and they want it now.

Enter SUPER. Now SUPER isn’t really a program, it’s a GUI for a collection of great encoders and renderers (ffmpeg and MEncoder to name a few) – but boy does it make things easier and it’s free to boot. One note though, I only recommend using conversion and re-encoding tools if you don’t have access to the original source format. You will always have better results if you are dumping the original source.

Here are some of the many scenarios in which SUPER can be used:

• Say an exported .MOV project needs to be converted to PSP, Zune, and iPod video formats for web-distribution. Check!
• How about a .VOB DVD container to any workable file for editing (.mov, .wmv etc)? Check!
• Convert .mov to DivX/XviD for easy size manageability.  Check!
• Convert .flv (think youtube) to any other video format. Check!