FFMPEG in Linux (converting videos)

Stuff you can't really do in Windows. Sort of but not really.

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Got that - and more - on the Mac. And with a very good GUI to go with it. You can actually see all of your choices and the results before committing to an encoding job. No command line to have to deal with - a biggie for me.

If you want a gui for ffmpeg look up winff. The linux version is pretty ugly (uses gtk1 widgets, although you can compile it to use gtk2), but the windows version is pretty good. It has presets for pretty much anything you can think of.

I still prefer the command line version myself, nothing beats ffmpeg is you want to copy the audio track from a video without converting it.

The command line isn't that fearsome, and once you've figured it out, you don't have to worry about it anymore. I convert plenty of stuff for my Treo phone, and once I figure out a good way to do it, I just wrap it in a script and forget about it. I've got scripts like "dvdtopalm", "flvtopalm", "flvtoavi", "mp3fromflv", etc.

For my birthday, I just got an HD camcorder, and now I'll have to see about converting high-bitrate AVC files...