Xilisoft Video Converter Ultimate for Mac

As a Mac user in a largely Windows environment, I've had to make a few adjustments. For example, our sanctuary projection is done from a Windows laptop running Easy Worship--a fine program that does pretty much what we ask it to do, but it has a little trouble working with Quicktime movie files, which is what my Mac likes to produce. I know I haven't totally figured out the world of Windows video codecs and such, and maybe there are ways to deal with this that I haven't discovered yet, but in the meantime, I've found a solution that has made my life much, much easier: Xilisoft Video Converter.

This little under-$60 utility has paid for itself quickly in time saved and hassles averted. All it does is convert video files from one format to another, and as far as I can tell, it can convert from almost any format to almost any other format, with a great deal of control over all of the details, such as resolution, bit rate, audio quality, frame rate--you name it.

I discovered Xilisoft while doing some research on Web video for a side project a couple of months ago, but I had forgotten about it until recently, when my pastor wanted to use a video from YouTube as a sermon illustration. It's not hard to download YouTube videos--there are plenty of Firefox add-ons that will allow you to save the Flash video file from YouTube or other video-sharing services, but the challenge at that point is to convert that .flv file into a format that Easy Worship can deal with--such as MPEG-1. Prior to my purchase of Xilisoft, I used to use a Web-based conversion service, and it worked well, but I was always a little nervous about what would happen if that service disappeared one day, or if it was so busy that I couldn't get a conversion done quickly, or if it couldn't convert a larger file--I suppose I'm a little paranoid about such things.

There was once an excellent Mac shareware application for this purpose, called VideoHub, but its developer decided to discontinue it. There is also ffmpegx for Mac, but in my experience, ffmpegx doesn't always work well. Enter Xilisoft--this application is available in three different versions, the $39.95 Standard edition, the $49.95 Platinum edition, and the $59.95 Ultimate edition, with a few more capabilities in the more expensive versions. I opted for the Ultimate edition.

Xilisoft Video Converter couldn't be much easier to use--you just choose your desired output format from a drop-down menu, then click a button to add the file(s) you wish to convert, and then click the convert button, and Xilisoft takes it from there. It's pretty fast, too, on my MacBook Pro.

I realize this post probably sounds a lot like an advertisement, but just for the record, I'm not getting paid for this endorsement--I'm merely a satisfied user. You can try Xilisoft out by just downloading it and running it without registration. You won't be able to convert long videos, and it will only convert half of a shorter video, but it's enough to give you a good idea of the capabilities of the program.

If you're a Mac person in church media work, do yourself a favor and check Xilisoft out. (And there's a Windows version, too!)