YouTubeGet is an all-in-one package designed to make it quick and easy to both download and convert YouTube videos.

The program offers various options for downloading the videos you want as well as several conversion options from FLV into MP4, 3GP, AVI, WMV, MOV etc meaning you can also watch the clips on your phone, iPod and even PSP. Unusually for a YouTube downloader, this program also supports the resuming of broken downloads which is very useful if you suffer from interrupted WiFi/Internet connections.

The program is automatically configured to detect any kind of YouTube activity that you perform on your PC. This means that even if you copy a YouTube URL to your clipboard, the program will automatically issue a pop-up asking if you'd like to save the video using YouTubeGet. This is useful if you want to download absolutely every video you see but not so useful if you're just sending a link to a friend - in fact it can be annoying and there seems no way to switch it off.

YouTubeGet also comes with its own mini YouTube browser which allows you to perform searches on YouTube videos although it's very limited and you'll be better using YouTube's main interface for searching for videos.

YouTubeGet is a well designed and presented video downloader that supports broken downloads and ensures you'll never have to worry about your favourite clips going offline.

Download YouTubeGet 4 in Softonic

Sometimes when you try to play music or a movie in your computer, you may find that either the image or the sound are not being properly played. These issues are probably a question of codecs, and you can solve them all with K-Lite Codec Pack.

This comprehensive kit includes all the codecs you need to have on your system if you want to play all audio and video formats without any problems. The full package includes quite a bunch of codecs, but the good thing is that you can choose which ones to install and which ones to leave out during the installation process.

Besides codecs, the K-Lite Codec Pack also includes several utilities that can come in very handy when dealing with audio and video files. Among others, you'll find tools to tweak and fix codecs, work with subtitles and obtain detailed information about any selected media file.

The only drawback I could point out about K-Lite Codec Pack is that it all may seem confusing for the novice user who doesn't really know what a codec is, and therefore can't really choose which ones to install. My advice here is to simply install all of them: it's the only way to make sure you'll be able to play pretty much any audio or video file on your PC.

K-Lite Codec Pack is a full featured collection of codecs that enables you to play just about any audio and video format on your PC without any problems.

Download K-Lite Codec Pack Full 3.9.5.0 in Softonic

As movies are increasingly being distributed in digital format, VSO DivxToDVD Converter represents the perfect way of converting your videos and burning them onto a DVD for home viewing. The application boasts the ability to transfer video to and from a mammoth range of different file types, including all the usual suspects such as DivX, MOV and MPEG.

VSO DivxToDVD Converter is one of the easiest to use of its kind and allows you to get started in a matter of seconds. You simply choose the files that you wish to convert, hit a button and wait for the magic to happen. Although it isn't the quickest burner of its kind, the results are flawless, and VSO DivxToDVD is able to compress MPEGs to a very small size without a noticeable reduction in quality. This is great if you want to cram two movies onto one disk.

Of course, we should point out that using the software to copy illegally downloaded movies to disk infringes copyright law, but for backing up movies and burning paid-for video downloads you'll struggle to find a better tool.

Download VSO ConvertXtoDVD 3.1.1.32 in Softonic

There are so many video and audio formats that sometimes you need a helping hand just to know which codec you need to play that darn file that won't open up in your multimedia player.

This is where MediaInfo comes in handy, by analyzing any media file you open with it and displaying a complete report with all the information available about that specific file. This information includes basic data such as file name, playtime, file size and the likes, as well as more specific details like used codec, bitrate, channel, sample rate and resolution, among others.

The information provided by the program can be displayed in a variety of ways, from a basic data sheet or plain text to a tree-like structure or an HTML document. It can also be exported to a file but surprisingly enough there's no option to obtain a printed copy.

Also, I missed the possibility to obtain more information from the Internet (a web link would have been enough) or being able to download the necessary codec if it's not present in the system.

With MediaInfo you can obtain a complete report on any audio or video file, display it in several ways and also export it to several formats though it doesn't support printing and lacks some advanced functionality.

Download MediaInfo 0.7.7.2 in Softonic

Choosing a multimedia player used to be a real no-brainer. However, during recent times the raft of new features and updates added to classic media players like Winamp, Windows Media Player, and even iTunes have left the apps increasingly bloated. Far from being the slick, well-oiled machines they once were, these programs have been stuffed with so much that they are in danger of ending up like a sluggish, overweight athlete still holding on to past glories.

For those looking for a fresh alternative to these ballooning apps, The KM Player could be your ticket. The application has a small desktop footprint and its minimalist interface, somewhat akin to the original Winamp 5, means that access and playback are quick and hassle-free. Like Winamp, the interface is fully skinable, and there are some nice aesthetic touches, such as the changing of colour on the player with every new track. There are all sorts of options to help you pimp your player, such as visualizations, plug-ins and playback options, but the beauty of KM Player is that these are turned on at your request rather than being forced upon you at the outset.

The application handles both audio and video, and supports a wide range of different formats, meaning that once installed, you should never need to touch another player. Video playback is particularly impressive thanks to the range of processing tools available that allow you to sharpen, change picture properties, apply filters and even make video captures from within the program.

Download KMPlayer 2.9.3.1444 Beta in Softonic

ProgDVB is a piece of software which allows you to watch SAT-Television and listen to Radio channels directly from satellite by using DVB-PCI cards with hardware decoders on the board, SAT-dish, and personal x86-compatible computers. ProgDVB has options for working with network broadcasting and Audio/Video recording of the stream to different digital-media formats.

Download ProgDVB 5.15 in Softonic

Ever fancy making your own film but don't have the patience to learn the major editing packages such as Adobe Premiere and Final Cut?

Then Auto Movie Creator converts you into Steven Spielberg but without the hours spent learning how to cut and splice and render videos that most video editing packages require. In fact, the program does much of the work for you via the editing wizard which is effectively your Assistant Director. It takes you logically and slowly through every step holding your hand as you go from capturing video to outputting it in a format that's suitable for your needs. One of the most time-consuming parts of editing is going through the footage to see which parts you need to take out. Auto Movie Creator even does this for you simply by selecting "Detect Scenes" and the program automatically scans your footage for the best quality shots. It also allows you to add professional style effects such as dissolves and fades simply by dragging and dropping them into the timeline. You can also add photos and other images into your video to give them a more personal touch.

Auto Movie Creator feels more like a photo editing package than a video editor but this is the key behind it's appeal - it requires absolutely no prior editing knowledge and is simple enough for even the most amateur of video makers.

Download Auto Movie Creator 3.1 in Softonic

Digital Media Converter makes it easy for you to convert your video and audio files from one format to another. Now you can organize and batch convert all your video and audio files between: VCD, DVD, AVI (DivX, MS MPEG4, uncompressed, etc), MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (PAL, NTSC), MP3, MOV, WMA, WMV, and WAV formats.

Making VCD and DVD format files is simple with Digital Media Converter. You can do even more, such as extracting the audio from the video and saving just the audio tracks. You can use the advanced settings to change the video frame size, audio / video compression codec, frequency, and the number of channels in an audio stream. The program's mass conversion capability lets you multi-select files and add entire folders for conversion.

It gives you complete control over the files that you want to convert. Digital Media Converter uses the Microsoft DirectShow technology and can therefore convert faster than other conventional products. You do not need to be a professional to use this tool. The software provides default settings and auto-select features designed to give you high quality and low size conversions.

Download Digital Media Converter 2.79 in Softonic

Webcams are useful to have video chats with friends across thousands of miles – or maybe just a couple of blocks away – but they can also be used for other purposes.

One of them is capturing video right to your computer, something you can easily do with AMCap. This simple tool grabs the video signal coming from your webcam and records it straight away to your hard drive, in MPEG2 or AVI format, provided you have the necessary codecs. It features some other interesting options, such as the possibility to take screenshots or adding special effects to the image (graphic overlay, alpha-blending, transparency, etc.).

That said, I must confess I found AMCap a bit deceiving. Maybe I expected something else: a webcam monitoring tool or something similar. But I honestly don't find this program that useful. It doesn't even let you take screenshots automatically according to a certain lapse of time. Also, video files take a lot of room, so you better have a large hard drive ready for them.

AMCap is a simple tool that lets you capture video from your webcam for whatever purpose you may have. If you're searching for a webcam monitoring app, you'll need to look somewhere else.

Download AMCap 9.20 in Softonic

Plato Video Converter is a powerful video conversion program. It supports converting video files from formats including AVI, DivX, XviD, MPEG, WMV, MOV to AVI, MPEG4, DivX, XviD, MPEG1, MPEG2, WMV, RealMedia video format files..

Key Features:

• Convert MPEG,WMV,MOV files to MEPG4,DivX,Xvid format files
• Convert AVI,MPEG,WMV,MOV files to RM files
• Convert AVI,MPEG,MOV files to WMV files
• Save the video frame to Images files
• Support BMP, EMF, GIF, J2K, JPEG, PCX, PNG, RAS,
• TGA, TIFF, WMF image format
• Setting Beginning point and Ending point to Convert

Download Plato Video Converter 7.76 in Softonic

If you started to watch a movie on your computer but didn't have time to finish it, why don't you convert it to an iPod friendly format and take it with you?

You can now easily convert any video file to store it on your iPod with Plato Video to iPod. This neat video converter has been especially developed to convert the most popular video formats to the standard video used in Apple devices, namely iPod, iPhone and Apple TV.

The program supports a wide range of source formats and is very easy to use. Simply load the video or videos you want to convert and select the appropriate conversion profile. You can also tweak conversion options to meet your needs: video size, bitrate, frame rate, aspect ratio and a lot more. The program can be set to automatically shut down the computer when the conversion is finished.

I liked the simplicity of use and the wide range of formats supported by Plato Video to iPod. On the downside, the interface is a bit dull. Also, it would have been great to have predefined profiles according to different iPod models (Nano, Touch and so on).

If you want to convert your favorite videos to an iPod friendly format and carry them on your device wherever you go, this is the tool you need.

Download Plato Video to iPod 7.85 in Softonic

PSP is the classic Sony console that apart from running games, also allows you to play all kinds of videos, but unfortunately only in the native format of the console.

PSP Video 9 however allows you to convert any video format to PSP. The program has a wide variety of options that lets you select both the quality of video and sound and it includes an administrator to copy video created directly to the console. All you need is a USB cable and your PSP to transfer files to your console. However, as you'll see in the developer forum, nothing goes quite as planned with this program. Although files are transferred, frequently you won't be able to watch them which is what a lot of users are reporting. One of the problems is that files will frequently appear as 0KB and the developer suggest that it may be because your PSP memory is not "clean" enough for the program to need. What you'll need to do is reformat your entire PSP memory card which is a drastic step but seems to be the only way to get things going again.

If you've got a PSP, and want to watch movies and clips in other formats, this is an option although you may find it hit and miss.

Download PSP Video 9 2.17 Beta in Softonic

Beyond TV allows you to gain control over your entertainment experience. With Beyond TV, you determine what you want to watch and when you want to watch it. With incredible features and extensive setting options, television is under your control.

Features of the program:

• No subscription fees
• Skip commercials and other parts of TV shows
• Search for shows by actor, director, or title
• Intelligent Electronic Program Guide resolves conflicts
• Record HDTV from free, over-the-air digital TV signals
• Record in DivX, MPEG-2 and WMV formats
• Search for movies and sports, as well as by other categories
• Play and pause FM radio stations

Download Beyond TV 4.8.2 in Softonic

Playing Flash files is increasingly important because of the proliferation of sites such as YouTube and DailyMotion.

Flash Movie Player is absolutely free and as the developers say, has no nag screens, no ads, no spyware and no time limit. It gives you much greater control over Flash movies than most players, allowing you to rewind swf movies, animations and Flash games to any position in playing or paused mode. The program can extract Flash movies from EXE projector files and save them in SWF format plus it even allows you to compile playlists, sorting functions and has a full screen mode with an auto-hiding navigation bar which conveniently disappears when the movie is in full flow. In addition, you can create snapshots easily although your saving formats are limited to JPEG or BMP format. The program allows you to explore cached SWF files which means you can add SWF files from IE, Firefox and Opera's cache to your playlist. In addition, the program can even trigger a Flash Movie as your screen saver from a random selection of clips.

A great Flash player that gives you 100% full control over your playlists and file playing options.

Download Flash Movie Player 1.5 in Softonic

Although it might appear like some sort of Communist software, CCCP is actually just a pack of codecs to help just about any video run on your system.

The full title is the "Combined Community Codec Pack". In reality, it's more like a filter pack than a codec pack but the developers say that "filter doesn't begin with C and we wanted a good acronym"! For anyone who understands Russian, the developers also like to point out that the name is also a pun on the Russian name Союз Советских Социалистических Республик, which is transliterated into the Latin alphabet as "Soyuz Sovietskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik", or "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics", abbreviated as "СССР" or "USSR". Anyway, the CCCP codec pack was created to replace the filter packs provided by other groups which simply often did not work properly or broke compatibility for other formats. In reality, it is an extremely powerful Codec pack, playing back effortlessly most popular formats and some unpopular ones too. There are now fiddly options to get it working although if you have other codec packs installed, you may experience some conflicts or significant slowdown in reproduction of your films.

However, overall, this is an impressive pack which deals with just about anything and I quite like the attitude of the developers and their ironic communist branding.

Download Combined Community Codec Pack 2008-01-24 in Softonic

Ripping CD's is increasingly difficult because of the protection that manufacturers place on the disks.

Now however, there are some programs strong enough to break that protection such as RipIt4Me. These encryption methods cannot be dealt with by most major DVD rippers and burners because they employ such encryption as ARccOS and RipGuard DVD techniques that totally immobilise programs such as DVD Shrink or DVD Decrypter. RipIt4Me is an incredibly powerful ripper which can handle just about any encryption. Of course, it should only be used for non commercial use - such as your own personal backups of your own commercial discs. The program is very simple to use with a "One Click" wizard to take you through the very simple ripping procedure which consists of little more than inserting a disc, browsing to a save location, and off you go. In it's latest incarnation, the program now has an automatic updater and an encryption decoder which detects whether the DVD appears to be protected or not. You'll see this displayed in the main window during the first step of the wizard.

This is a remarkably powerful ripping tool that can rip just about any copyrighted DVD (although not all) but only use it for your own backups.

Download RipIt4Me 1.7.1.0 in Softonic

Sometimes an image is worth a thousand words, and this is why videos are usually the handiest way to share a tip o create a tutorial.

Screen recording is child's play with TipCam. This program enables you to capture any activity that takes place on your screen and save it as an online video that you can share with anybody. You can show off your latest battles in your favorite game, or help a customer that needs assistance with a particular software application.

TipCam is very easy to use. You can enable, pause and resume screen recording with hotkeys, plus make the "camera" follow your mouse with its pan/zoom function, although there's no possibility to define the size of this zoom.

On the downside, the program only saves videos to FLV. That said, if you want to publish them online, you can use the developer's website - after signing up for free. While this can be a good way to share them, I'd still prefer having a wider format variety to save my videos.

With TipCam you can easily record any activity on your screen. Unfortunately videos are saved only in FLV format .

Download TipCam 1.0.55.1795 in Softonic

VirtualDub is a video capture and processing utility licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It is designed to be a general utility that can trim and clean up video before exporting to tape or processing with another program. It does not possess the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video.

It has batch-processing capabilities for processing large numbers of files, which you can extend with third-party video filters. VirtualDub is best at processing AVI files, although it can read (not write) MPEG-1 and handle BMP image sets.

Download VirtualDub 1.8.1 Stable in Softonic

Sometimes I prefer watching movies and TV series on the computer rather than doing it on the couch. The image quality in my PC monitor is better and I can handle more formats than just DVD.

Of course, I need a good video player in order to enjoy my favorite movies at their most, and my choice is no other than BSPlayer. This great video player features anything you need to watch movies or any other kind of video on your PC. It supports all popular video formats (and audio as well, in case you were wondering) and though its basic interface is not really the nicest one I've seen, you can easily customize it with skins.

BSPlayer supports video subtitles, takes screenshots of movie currently playing, lets you create bookmarks and chapters to move along videos more easily and has also support for plug-ins. I especially liked the way you can control playback, either by using keyboard shortcuts or simply your mouse: one click to stop the video, two clicks to go full screen, mouse wheel to raise or low the volume…

The only thing I didn't like was the fact that, being a free version, you're obliged to install an adware element on your PC that displays ads from time to time while you're browsing the way. It's a safe app that doesn't compromise your privacy, but still it's not my cup of tea. I guess it's just the price you have to pay for having such a great video player for free.

BSPlayer lets you enjoy your favorite movies on the PC with a wide range of features (subtitles, screenshots, bookmarks and more) provided you're willing to accept some ads on your desktop.

Download BSPlayer Free 2.28.964 in Softonic

One of the most frustrating things about video playback is when you don't have the right codecs installed.

SMPlayer attempts to do away with this problem completely by attempting to play videos regardless of the codecs they need. It does this by using the MPlayer engine which the developers claim can play almost all video formats. In reality, this is not always the case. What you may find is that if you're trying to play a WMV file protected by DRM for example, you will see snippets of the film but not the whole thing. However, the player has many other great features that make it an interesting proposition. One of the most useful is the way it remembers most of the settings of files that you play a bit like a DVD Player. If you turn off a film because you're a bit tired, when you open it later, it will start from exactly the same point where you left it with all the original settings including subtitles and audio. One other area where the player excels is in subtitling. SMPlayer allows you to choose subtitles in a variety of formats allowing you to choose the font, size, and even colors.

There are many other great aspects to SMPlayer - audio track switching, mouse scrolling and multiple speed playback - that on top of it's codec free playback, make it an excellent choice.

Download SMPlayer 0.6.1 in Softonic