ChrisTV TimeShift lets you freeze the live TV stream, giving you a break while it's still recording. TimeShifting gives you recordings with time delayed playback which offers various advantages over the linear recording style you were used till now. By TimeShift recording you can fast-forward through commercials and create your instant-replay on a live TV program. Never miss anything from your favourite show, by timeshift recording, a simple pause will let you resume later the interrupted TV program viewing.

ChrisTV Online! is software for Windows which brings to your desktop a large number of TV channels, radio channels and other kinds of video/audio content broadcasted on the Internet (like music video clips, movie trailers, public webcams, etc) using only your Internet connection and no other dedicated hardware. Having a channels' database with 800+ TV channels and 600+ radio stations from more than 100 countries, ChrisTV Online! provides you access to those channels and more than that a professional user friendly interface to watch and listen high quality video/audio content from the Internet.

The channels database is updated on a daily basis, so you'll benefit of an increased number of updated channels' streams every time without any effort. An outstanding feature of ChrisTV Online!, which you will not find in a similar software product, is the frame display mode which lets you watch video played content in a custom or predefined size frame window. This frame video window can be dragged in any place of your desktop and in combination with 'Always on Top' feature gives you the option to work on your computer and watch your favorite show in one corner of the screen.

The ChrisTV Online! interface offers you fast and easy access to all channels available in our database through the Channels List panel, where you can Group channels by Country, Type, Category, Language, Station Name. To gain fast access to your favorite TV channel or Radio station, you can add them to ChrisTV Online! Favorites List, which provides the same grouping feature as with the Channels List.

There are a number of video editing packages out there, from the simple Windows Media Maker to industry standards like Adobe Premiere or Final Cut. Sony’s contribution is Vegas Video and like most Sony products, it offers an original take on the editing genre.

Vegas actually began as an audio editing app and it shows – the entire feel of the program is more like an audio editing program than conventional video editing programs. On the plus side, Sony has emphasised giving users the greatest control over soundtracks and audio tracks to ensure that your film sounds great.

Sony Vegas Video 7.0 includes an entire suite of tools – Vegas itself as well as DVD Architect 4 to help you burn films and Dolby Digital AC3 coding software to enable you to offer broadcast quality sound in your productions. Vegas allows you to edit DV, HDV, SD/HD-SDI, and all XDCAM formats in real time and even give them surround sound. As HDV starts to become more popular, the ability to edit this particular format means that for some users, it’s their preferred editing package by default.

The video timeline works on a typical Windows drag-and-drop principle where you can add a myriad of effects to video and audio, cutting and splicing it with ease. However, as mentioned earlier, the interface is tailored more for audio than video editing. Unlike Windows Movie Maker or Adobe Premiere, the actual video preview window of what you’re working on is given little space, being tucked away in the corner. This is rather annoying when you’d rather see a decent preview of what you’re creating than have the timelines dominate the screen.

However, one nice feature of the layout is that the interface can be customised according to your preference. You can save these configurations so that for different projects, you can have different layouts. This is especially useful if you’re trying to concentrate on one particular aspect of your film such as special effects or rendering options. You can even create your own keyboard shortcuts, a handy option for those who are mouse-shy.

The audio features are first class though. Sony Vegas was one of the first to support 24 bit audio as well as 5.1 surround sound – usually the preserve of professional editing programs such as Avid. To add surround sound, you’ll need to use the Dolby Digital AC3 software. Another excellent Sony idea has been to add a network connection to other PCs during installation. So for example, if you’re working on a project with a friend, you can edit seamlessly in real-time together.

For creating really cool titles, Vegas now features the Sony ProType titler (available in the Media Generators tab) which allows you to make some really swanky looking graphics. There's also new digital signage support which allows you to create rotated projects for viewing on a vertical or inverted display. Encoding has also been improved with support for 10-bit video encoding when previewing or capturing from AJA SDI video cards.

Vegas is never going to compete with prosumer programs based on the traditional Avid way of editing. For those used to such programs, the interface could prove too awkward, limited and confusing to make editing video a pleasure. However, as regards sound, it can’t be touched. For many users, it makes the perfect package to polish the soundtrack on their film after editing it in another package. Be warned also that if you’re unfamiliar with video editing programs, it's going to take a while to get accustomed to Vegas, so the bundled tutorial is highly recommended.

DVDFab Platinum is simply the easiest way to copy a DVD movie. Just insert the movie and a blank DVD then press Start. Your entire movie - including menus, trailers and special features - is copied to a single DVD with just one click, and everything happens automatically.

Since bursting onto the internet in 2000, BSPlayer has been downloaded over 60 million times according to its developers. The aim of the player is to "enable users to focus on watching the movie instead of dealing with poor computer capabilities or running around looking for a proper settings and codecs." For those that have had problems with mainstream media players on offer, BSPlayer may prove a useful alternative.

It supports all kinds of media including avi, mpeg, asf, wmv, mp3, etc but also specializes in DivX playback. Many users report that DivX files that wouldn’t work on other players, did in BS Player. One of the major drawbacks with many media players is resource hogging but BSPlayer consumes no more than many audio players and start-up is pleasantly fast. Because it does not use much of the processing power, its more suited to those users with slower machines that are not looking for too many fancy features.

BSPlayer also comes bundled with BSMediaLibrary which can manage all your multimedia content and enables you to create your own playlists. It also has a multitude of skins available for download, many designed by other devoted users.

The major drawback with BSPlayer is the concealed menu which appears and disappears when you wave the mouse over it. This becomes increasingly annoying if you are listening to something whilst using another application. However, loading subtitles is easy and dragging and dropping files into the screen to open files means you can avoid the annoying menu. You also have a small graphic equaliser and can load the player with other codecs that you might need.

Overall, definitely worth trying for anyone who has had problems with DivX files or are tired of bulky mainstream offerings.

Magic DVD Ripper is a very easy and powerful DVD ripping software, which can convert DVD to VCD, SVCD and AVI(DivX) formats or backup DVD to hard drive without any loss of quality. You can then enjoy them anytime without DVD discs, or burn them to blank DVD or CD discs using burning software.

Compared with competitors, Magic DVD Ripper has both convert function and backup function, and faster ripping speed. And other software may give you unsync audio/video, but this software always works perfectly.

Creating customized DVD movies is a piece of cake with Droppix DVD Maker. The program takes care of everything so that you only have to worry about enjoying your favorite videos from the couch.

You can use any video files stored in your local drive (the program supports the most popular formats) or import videos right away from famous video websites like Youtube, Daily Motion or Google Video with just a single click. Droppix DVD Maker also includes several ready-to-use menu templates you can use to create personalized DVD menus, though the method to change them is not very well implemented (a double click on the current menu image would be much more intuitive than having to open the program's settings menu).

Another drawback to Droppix DVD Maker is the fact that you can't preview the video before converting and recording it to the actual disc, while other similar tools usually include a built-in player. At least the conversion process is easy and quite fast too.

Droppix DVD Maker lets you create customized DVD movies in a very easy way, but lacks some handy features found in other similar tools.

ImTOO AVI to DVD Converter lets you convert your video files to DVD format and burn them to a DVD disc or save them as ISO files.

The burning process in itself is quite simple, both in the procedure and also in the variety of options that the program features, which is pretty scarce. You can only convert MPEG or AVI files, and video conversion options are also a bit limited, meaning you can choose between 4:3 or 16:9, and between PAL or NTSC. Nothing else.

On the upside, the program features a large selection of menu templates for your customized menu, which can also be easily edited to add your own background music and images. Also, the program includes an embedded player to preview videos before actually converting or burning them.

With ImTOO AVI to DVD Converter you can quickly convert any MPEG or AVI video files to DVD and burn the disc right away.

ImToo DVD Audio Ripper lets you rip the audio track of your favorite DVD movies to any format in just a few clicks.

The program supports a wide range of audio formats including MP3, Ogg, WMA, AAC and ACR. Besides choosing the target audio format, you can also customize other details in the conversion profile such as the bitrate, sample rate and number of channels.

Using ImToo DVD Audio Ripper is a cinch: simply insert the disc into the DVD drive, choose the profile that best suits your needs and click on the "Rip" button to start the process. The program can also work with IFO files in your hard drive. This simplicity of use will please more novice users, but may fall short of expectations for more advanced ones.

ImToo DVD Audio Ripper is probably one of the easiest tools to rip the audio track of your DVD movies to a variety of formats.

SWF (short for Shockwave Flash) is a proprietary file format for multimedia and especially vector graphics. It is intended to be small enough for publication on the web and it is also often used for creating animated display graphics and menus for DVD movies, and television commercials. Unfortunately you can't just right-click and download this type of file. If you want to save them to your PC’s desktop or your mobile device, you need to find a way to save and convert them to a video file compatible with your favourite video playback software. Bare in mind that after the conversion process the output file's size will be much bigger, e.g. it’ll be more than 20 times bigger in a swf to mp4 conversion.

Magic swf2avi 2008 should simplify these operations, by checking the cache of your web-browser (IE, Opera or Firefox) and displaying all the swf files that your browser has saved while browsing. Sometimes website developers set meta tags which restrict SWF caching and in that case Magic swf2avi will hot help you in any way.

It’s a pity the application doesn’t provide you with an automatic tool to download SWF files, so sometimes you’ll need to use an additional program like Orbit Downloader. Magic swf2avi 2008 can convert SWF files in 38 formats, enough for nearly every device you might have, from MP3 player to mobile phones.

When the program manages to find swf files in your browser's cache, the whole process can be fairly quick. Unfortunately many videos are released in FLV format and not SWF and the program cannot convert them.

IPOD for Free Video Converter is a simple converter which allows you to watch all your favourite videos on your iPod. All configurations for the conversion can be easily accessed and adjusted and so it generally performs it's task pretty quickly and easily. Probably the major advantage of this converter over others is that it can download directly from YouTube and convert the files immediately into iPod format.

This one click downloading and conversion avoids the need for a third party program and makes watching videos on your iPod easier than ever before. Just be careful that you've configured the conversions to convert to the appropriate screen size and quality for your iPod. The final files can be rather large but it's worth it if you can watch your videos on the move.

A one stop solution for iPod addicts that want to take their videos with them.

These days we've seen plenty of tools to save Youtube videos to your hard drive, but what if you're only interested in saving the soundtrack of those videos? Then the best choice is probably this little application.

Free Youtube to MP3 Converter clearly states its aim in its own name: it grabs a Youtube video of your choice and saves its soundtrack to your hard drive in MP3 format. Although you can only save files one by one, the process is quite fast.

The program enables you to choose between four possible quality presets but doesn't allow you to create new ones.

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.

It's considered to be a must have free video player. It can play any type of video including 192 video codec and 85 audio coded - like VLC player, but with a nicer interface. It is also supposed to optimize CPU usage and use as few resources as possible. The package contains optimized builds for Pentiums, Athalons and Dual Core processors. You just select the one suitable for you during the installation process.

The package installs both MPlayer and the front-end SMPlayer, which is the same program but with a nicer looking interface. A number of useful features are included: the subtitles option for example, allows you to load subtitle files and link them to a video. You also have many options to deinterlace, denoise and apply filters to improve the video rendering.

I've noticed minor usability issues: when you stop the video for example, the pointer in the status bar should restart from the beginning, whereas with this player it just stays at the point of the film you stopped it, making no difference with the pause function. Also the program doesn't remember the volume of the sound when you close and re-open the application.

MPlayer supports 192 video codec and also video streaming, QuickTime and RealAudio files making it the perfect choice if you don't want to mess around with a different player for each video format.

A few years ago the task of ripping a DVD movie to your hard drive was so complicated that not everyone could do it. Nowadays it can get as easier as cicking on a button, which is just the way BitRipper works.

This tool is probably the easiest way to rip your favorite movies to your hard drive, provided they're not protected discs. Simply insert the disc into the DVD player, launch BitRipper and it'll automatically scan its contents and add them to a drop-down menu so that you can select exactly the sections you want to rip, if not the whole disc. Then just click on the "Start ripping" button and you're done! The DVD movie will start to be ripped to your hard drive on the fly, that is, without needing loads of space in your system.

This is probably the best method for average users, but if you prefer to be in control of everything when ripping a movie, you can also customize the program's settings by selecting codec (though only those which work with AVI files), aspect ratio, resolution and other technical details.

BitRipper is probably the easiest way to rip DVD movies to your hard drive, as long as it's not protected material.

As English speakers, we don't usually have any problems with understanding movies and TV shows in their native language as a great percentage of them is produced in our mother tongue. However there are quite a large number of movies in other languages for which we may need SubDowbloader's help.

This program enables you to search the Internet for subtitle files for any video files you have in your computer. This means it can work the same with movies and series. The search procedure is a bit strange, as you have to select the actual video file you're searching subtitles for - instead of entering the video's title which makes more sense to me.

On the upside, the program lets you search subtitles for several files simultaneously, making the task a lot easier when you need subtitles for a complete season of your favorite TV show. You can also upload your own subtitle files, which keeps the program's database in constant growth thanks to its users.

If you ever need subtitles for your movies or TV shows then give SubDownloader a go: it may be the faster, easier way to find them.

The application supports not only the files containing audio streams but AVIs without any audio as well. For the time being the program uses only XviD codec to recompression process (versions: 1.0.3 or newer). The installation pack contains all required components (the newest versions of: VirtualDubMod, AviSynth and XviD). AVI ReComp can be very useful for users who want to clear their AVIs out of GMC or Qpel functions to prepare the clips for standalone DVD players. The program contains a feature of embedding subtitles into video. So if you want burnt in subtitles, you can use this software.

When you want to enjoy your favorite DVD and movies on different platforms (say your PC, your mobile phone or your portable gaming device) you need a powerful tool like ImTOO MP4 Converter.

This app converts video from DVD and other popular formats to MP4, the standard video format used by a wide range of devices such as iPod Touch, iPhone, PSP, Apple TV and others. Each device includes a few variables in size and resolution so that you can choose the one that best suits your gadget. They're all saved as presets but can be also easily customized.

ImTOO MP4 Converter is very easy to use. Simply drag and drop the video files you want to convert onto the program's interface, select the format and click on the "Encode" button. There's also a built-in video player for a quick video review, though it doesn't work that well. But this is truly a minor flaw in an excellent conversion tool such as ImTOO MP4 Converter.

If you need to convert your DVD movies or any other large-sized file to a portable device-compatible format, ImTOO MP4 Converter is what you're looking for.

Movavi Video Converter (formerly known as ConvertMovie) is a powerful and easy to use, video converter and DVD ripper.

The aim of the developers has been to make it as easy as possible to convert from one popular video format to another and save videos and DVDs to as many external devices as possible including iPod, Zune, PSP, PDA and mobile phone. It can also merge multiple video files into a single movie, rip DVDs, and extract soundtracks from your video files. The first thing that strikes you, whichever of these functions you need to carry out, is the ease of use. It's very simple and straightforward to use but in the past, had frequently been subject to bugs especially when dealing with larger files. This latest version however seems to have ironed out most of those problems and you'll be able to convert, merge and rip DVD's without any major problems. The program is also beautifully presented and feels like a really professional and solid product. They've also added lots of other cool new features such as the long overdue subtitle selection options for DVD ripping, an editing tools panel for quick access to all editing features, video cropping and rotation, professional filters and effects and also the possibility to add watermarks and logos. The conversions have also been speeded-up, especially for 3GP formats.

A simple, solid and brilliantly performing video converter, merger and DVD ripper that any video fan should have in their collection.

AoA Audio Extractor provides you a handy tool to extract audio/sound or background music from video files.

With AoA Audio Extractor, you can easily extract audio tracks from AVI/DivX/XviD, MPEG, MPG, DAT, WMV, MOV, MP4, 3GP video files and save them as MP3, WAV and AC3 formats.

It can also be used to save any portion of the audio of a video file. AoA Audio Extractor is free so you never need to pay for AoA Audio Extractor.