AVS Video Editor makes video editing easier than it may seem at first sight. It may not be as feature rich as other more professional video editors, but it works perfectly fine to create home-made multimedia compositions about your last holiday trip or the baby's first birthday.

The program features a nicely designed interface that's a pleasure to use. It follows the classic editor layout, with different areas dedicated to media library, timeline and preview window. Plus AVS Video Editor includes loads of transition effects, video effects, and text and video overlays that will help you easily spice your video up.

The whole creative process is covered by AVS Video Editor, from capturing video from a wide variety of external sources, to finally saving your creation in different formats depending on your target platform: computer file, burned disc, multimedia device or web page.

AVS Video Editor is an excellent mixture of power and ease of use that provides the average user with all the tools you need for video editing, while keeping difficulty at a reasonable level.

Download AVS Video Editor 6.3.2.234 in Softonic

Features

These days, it's an app that attempts to be all things to all people - play DVDs, organize music, catalog photos, convert video, interact with social networking sites, browse internet multimedia....there's no end to what RealPlayer offers to its users. Even so, it's not an out-and-out success...

Usability

For a start, installation of RealPlayer is annoying - it takes a while, requires lots of "nexts" and tries to install and enable several features that users don't really need. Finally, when it starts, you're offered a chance to upgrade to paid versions of RealPlayer before you have to register yourself with Real Networks. If all this messing around doesn't appeal, check out a slimline app like UMPlayer.

When you're up and running, RealPlayer features a wide interface where you will notice ads and videos recommended by Real Networks. This looks cluttered and messy, and it's hard to know what the app actually offers. In reality, RealPlayer is ideal for playing and sharing video with your friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter and it works easily with BlackBerry, iPod, iPhone and other game systems. The new video converter allows you to copy online video to your iPod, Xbox, PS3 and other devices. Unfortunately, you can't rip DVDs with RealPlayer, although this is available as a feature if you upgrade to RealPlayer Plus.

Most recently, RealPlayer has been updated with far better mobile and social networking integration. You can now copy your favorite videos to an iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry and dozens of other popular devices automatically. Downloading internet videos is faster, and for those of you with something to hide, RealPlayer offers a new Private folder. Social media has also been bumped up, with direct access to Facebook videos and usefully, a built-in feature to transfer videos to your mobile devices.

Quality

That said, RealPlayer isn't bad at all. It's comparable to Windows Media Player 12 as they both have some impressive ways of organizing your music. For me, the best feature is the CD burner which is something I've used from the early days of RealPlayer. The sheer quality of some of the media only available in Real formats makes RealPlayer an essential item in the toolkit of any fan of internet video and audio.

Conclusion

There's no shortage of media players theses days, and RealPlayer is by no means a bad option. It offers lots of features, good options and is a high-quality player that will do justice to your media. The only problem is that despite its modern features, it feels like a bit of a dinosaur. It's heavy and slow, looks chunky and takes an age to respond to clicks, and for many people - especially those who have experience of lighter options - it's just not the most comfortable player.

RealPlayer is a media player that, although powerful, has suffered from serious feature-creep over the years.

Download RealPlayer 16.0.2.232 in Softonic

Most user will never need to use K-Lite Codec Pack Full. It contains the same set of codecs that exist in K-Lite Codec Pack Standard, but also add the ability for users to encode their own videos.

K-Lite Codec Pack Full is best utilized by users who understand bitrates, frames per second, and resolution aspect ratios. Even though K-Lite Codec Pack Full is a great codec pack, it is not recommended for users who will not be creating and encoding their own videos.

The playback capability of K-Lite Codec Pack Full is like K-Lite Codec Pack Standard. The tests playing various file formats showed the same quality and function with the AVI, WMV, MKV, and MP4 videos. All played with no problems and K-Lite Codec Pack Full also contains subtitle support. K-Lite Codec Pack Full along with K-Lite Codec Pack Standard can re-time subtitles so if a user had issues with subtitle playback, it can be customized.

Using K-Lite Codec Pack Full as an encoder is the bulk of the purpose of the program. Since it layers more functions on top of K-Lite Codec Pack Standard, it is possible to view the exact specific audio and video codecs are being used, how they are utilized, and how they interact with the hardware they are running on. It is interesting information for the curious, but unnecessary for standard playback.

K-Lite Codec Pack Full is a great starting point for novice users who want to understand how media formats work and a good tool for working with different media types for customization.

Download K-Lite Codec Pack Full 9.9.0 in Softonic

There are many different video and audio files formats available. From numerous video formats to the different quality audio files, it takes a lot of time to search individually and install each codec that are being supported.

K-Lite Codec Pack Standard is the easiest and most comprehensive codec pack for users who watch or listen to audio on their personal computers. Including Media Player Classic Home Cinema and a wider array of specified codecs, K-Lite Codec Pack Standard never has a problem playing a video file or audio format. But the playback of certain file types, especially those that are created in high definition need suitable hardware for smooth playback.

Testing using WMV, AVI, MP4, and MKV; K-Lite Codec Pack Standard had no issues playing back the files. There is a small issue with WMV format with the video playing with small image tears. The other formats had no issues.

Media Player Classic Home Cinema is the core of K-Lite Codec Pack Standard and the combination of the multitude of codecs and the simplicity of Media Player Classic Home Cinema allowed for smoother playback than K-Lite Codec Pack Basic.

It is simple to see statistics about videos through Media Player Classic Home Cinema. Subtitle support also exists in K-Lite Codec Pack Standard and with the combination of Media Player Classic Home Cinema; it is even easier to activate the subtitles in video.

K-Lite Codec Pack Standard is the go-to all-in-one codec pack for video users. The interface and functionality is perfect for almost any media format and without being intrusive, there is not a bundle better.

K-Lite Codec Pack Standard will play anything you throw at it – 99% of the time.

Download K-Lite Codec Pack Standard 9.9.0 in Softonic

This update includes:

Updated Media Player Classic Home Cinema to version 1.6.5.6237
Updated LAV Filters to version 0.53.2-8-g7fd402c
Updated DirectVobSub to xy-VSFilter version 3.0.0.211
Fixed a problem that could result in subtitles failing to load

These new installations will ensure that any broken codecs are repaired and optimized for useability.

Download K-Lite Codec Pack Update 9.9.3 in Softonic

The K-Lite Codec Pack Basic comes in three separate versions for different tiered users. From the simple basic pack, which includes the most common video and audio codecs and includes subtitle support, the K-Lite Codec Pack Basic version will allow the majority of users to watch and listen to their content with relative ease.

One main difference of K-Lite Codec Pack Basic is that it does not include Media Player Classic Home Cinema. This simple media player is the easiest to use, but not necessary in K-Lite Codec Pack Basic. Windows Media Player is more than enough for the small amount of codecs in this set.

K-Lite Codec Pack Basic’s functionality is also directly connected to the hardware specifications of the system it is running on, so do not expect to be able to easily play high definition content with smooth framerates even though K-Lite Codec Pack Basic is able to render the files.

The most common codecs like DirectShow, MKV decoders, and MP4 decoders are installed in K-Lite Codec Pack Basic so there is not much more needed for every day viewing. Even though K-Lite Codec Pack Basic supports audio, it is meant for video. With the numerous video codecs and encoders creating files that are high quality with smaller file sizes, native Windows support does not exist for all the variations.

The different tested content in K-Lite Codec Pack Basic included MP4, AVI, WMV, and MKV; all at different levels of quality and resolutions. The codec pack had no problem playing any of the files in Windows Media Player. K-Lite Codec Pack Basic also supports different subtitle formats like SRT, SUB, and IDX, but take a little customizing for the subtitles to display properly.

K-Lite Codec Pack Basic is the perfect set of third-party codecs that are not natively supported in Windows.

Download K-Lite Codec Pack Basic 9.9.0 in Softonic

Video conversion apps are ten a penny, but not all of them are effective or easy to use. Luckily for us, MyVideoConverter is. This app is very self-explanatory – just add your videos (the app supports individual and batch conversions), choose the conversion profile, tweak the settings if you want, and hit Start.
The process is quick and easy, and the app will even auto shutdown once it has finished.
MyVideoConverter has some very basic editing tools too – namely the ability to cut and join files.
The tools for these are actually pretty ok, but they certainly won’t let you do anything very adventurous. Chances are, however, that the average user won’t actually need anything more complicated, making MyVideoConverter a perfect all-round app.

Download MyVideoConverter 3.14 in Softonic

With support for WinXP, Vista, and Win7 as the popular operating systems, Final Media Player is all you will need to watch video and play audio.

Download Final Media Player 2012 Update 1 in Softonic

MyFFVideoconverter supports batch video conversions, features a watermark function, and gives you full control over compression/encoder rates, resolution and frame rates. MyFFVideoConverter supports everything from HD to high compression for smaller files making it a powerful all-round multipurpose tool for video editing and conversion.

Download MyFFVideoconverter 1.0.11 in Softonic

Video converters - there's more of them on the market that almost any other type of software, but very few of them impress. How does 4Free Video Converter hold up against accepted leaders, like
Format Factory and GOM Video Converter? Well, in short, 4Free Video Converter is good, but not great, like a good many of its contemporaries.

For a start, 4Free Video Converter is ugly. Really ugly. Whoever decided that sludge green made a good interface color was wrong - and there's no option to change it! That said, the color doesn't impact on the usability, so it's pretty easy to load videos up, decide where to save them, and pick the format you want to convert to.

The good thing about picking a format is that 4Free Video Converter has all of the options nicely arranged by both format and device compatibility, which makes it easier to choose. It also allows you to customize formats for your own specifications, but this feature seemed buggy, didn't always work, and wouldn't let us save any presets for future use.

On the upside, 4Free Video Converter does allow you to convert batches of videos, but it doesn't have an automatic shutdown feature, so you'll have to wait until they're finished before you go to bed. Also bear in mind that although it's called "4Free" Video Converter, this is a limited "freemium" app, and so some of the features you can see on the interface are not actually available.

4Free Video Converter - it's good, but not great, and misses all the nice touches that make the perfect conversion app.

Download 4Free Video Converter 3.3 in Softonic