# Recommend me some video software

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-video-software/338618>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 5, 2006, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-video-software/338618 "2006-01-05T19:41:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Oslo\_Ostragoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a9a28c/32.png) [@Oslo\_Ostragoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oslo_Ostragoth)\
**Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-video-software/338618/1 "2006-01-05T19:41:15Z")

</div>

I have collected a bunch of video clips in various formats that I would like to move off of my hard drive and on to VCD. What’s a decent program to convert AVI’s etc. to MPEG-1 for the task? Does converting video take a lot of computer horsepower?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![awldune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c77e96/32.png) [@awldune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/awldune)\
**Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-video-software/338618/2 "2006-01-05T19:44:39Z")

</div>

[doom9.org](http://www.doom9.org) is a good resource for anything video-related. There should be a guide there for converting AVI-\>VCD.

More horsepower helps when converting video, but is not required. It can run as slowly as it needs to.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mikemike2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mikemike2/32/305_2.png) [@Mikemike2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mikemike2)\
**Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-video-software/338618/3 "2006-01-05T19:50:13Z")

</div>

DVD Movie Factory from Ulead is very good and I believe you can download it and try it for a month for free. There are several other excellent similar programs. Ulead can create VCDs, SVCDs and DVDs.

It takes a lot of horsepower to convert videos from one format to another. Although if you are using mpeg one it is not as bad as mpeg 2 as the files are smaller. You can always let your computer work overnight.