Videos are the best way to express pretty much anything, however, video format support is limited on most devices and services. You can’t just play an HD camcorder AVCHD video on a standard Smartphone.
The good news is, converting video format is actually quite easy and doesn’t take much time either. You can play almost any video on any device you want just by converting it to the required format.
Converting video format also affects the size of the video, it can increase or decrease. This is quite handy if you need to upload the video to any service where people could download it. Tampering with bitrate of a Video can also decrease the size of the video, however, the quality may also be sacrificed. You can check out this article “How To Compress Video”, if you intend to decrease size of a video.
In this Tutorial, we are going to address three different and completely free to use tools. You can just use the one that fits your needs perfectly.
Use VLC Player to Convert Videos
VLC Player is one of the most famous media players, supporting tons of formats. There is a good chance you might already have VLC Player installed, but if you don’t, then you can always download it for free. Along with support for different formats, it can convert videos to different formats as well.
Just open VLC Player and click on “Media” at the top left corner. From the drop down menu choose “Convert/ save…”.
From the next window, click on “Add” and choose the video which you would like to convert. Once selected, you can just click on “Convert/Save” at the bottom to access convert options.
In convert options you will see the option “Profiles”, you can choose the format here which you require (Profiles = Formats).
Note: To keep things simple, the names of the formats are sometimes not used, instead, the name of the device is used. So you need to look for the format or the device on which you would like to play the video.
Next to drop down menu, you will see three options which you can use to edit a profile, delete it or add new profiles.
Before converting, you need to go to “Edit” option and customize how you need your video and audio to be converted (you will have to do it for every new profile you use).
This is the ideal place to tweak the output video file size. Here you can change the bitrate, which is the amount of information for each second of video. If you decrease it, the file size will be smaller, at the expense of video quality. It is up to you to find the best tradeoff that you will be comfortable with.
Click on “Edit” option and then click on Video codec tab. There you will see many different options to modify video, you can either customize or if you just want to convert then tick checkbox next to “Keep original video track”.
Same goes for “Audio Codec” tab, either customize it or check “Keep original audio track” to keep things same and hit “Save”(you have to customize these options, they are mandatory for proper results).
You will also have to choose the destination folder where the converted video will be saved, just click on “Browse” next to the search bar and choose your location. You will also have to give your file a name.
Now just hit “Start” and your file will be converted and saved to the selected folder. The conversion time varies depending on the size of the video and the format you selected.
Here is a Video showing how you can convert videos using VLC media player:
Use Any Video Converter to Convert Videos
This is one of the most used tools for converting videos and comes with a huge list of formats, but it is a bit slow compared to other tools. However, it is extremely simple to use and comes with a robust list of formats, unlike VLC or other tools. You can download Any Video Converter from their website, and if you would like to learn more about it then click here.
Just download the tool and launch it. The process is simple, just click on the blue button in the middle and choose your video or drag video to it.
Once your video is selected, click on drop down menu on the left of button “Convert Now”. You will see a long list of formats along with devices that they work on. Just click on the device for which you need the video to be converted and choose one of the available formats.
After choosing the desired format, you can view and customize the video according to your desired from the window right below the “Convert Now” button. Make all the changes, including the destination folder and click on “Convert Now” button. The video will be converted and you can view it from the destination folder you selected.
You can also add more than one video to convert at the same time. Just click on “Add Videos” and add as many videos you like.
You can also checkout this Video to understand the process better:
Convert Videos Online
If you don’t want to download a third-party tool, then you can also use dedicated website where you will just have to upload your file and download the converted file. For this purpose, we are going to use website Online Convert, it is simple and fast to use and also offers many other conversion options besides Video conversion.
Their Privacy Policy states that “There is no backup made of user files, neither are the contents of the files monitored without permission of the uploader.” However, we will still not recommend converting videos that have really sensitive data.
To start converting, click on the drop down menu under the heading “Video converter” and choose the format to which you would like to convert. Once selected, you will be automatically directed to the next step.
On the next page, click on “Choose Files” to select the video that you would like to convert (you can choose more than one) or post the link of the video below it.
You can also customize how you want the video in the window below, such as audio quality or select a specific part of the video. Now, click on “Convert file” to start converting.
Note: The video format is converted quite fast, however, the time can be consumed on uploading and downloading the file. If you have a slow connection then this option is not recommended, as it will take quite some time to upload and download the file.
Once the file is converted, it will start downloading automatically and you will also have access to some new feature, such as deleting the file from the server right away, converting the same file to another format and upload the file to cloud storage, etc.
If there are any questions regarding file conversion or you know any better method to convert files, let us know in the comments below.