While the iPod is best know for being the music lovers best friend, it can also be a useful tool for movie buffs.

Xilisoft DVD to iPod Converter lets you extract DVD video and audio tracks of DVDs and convert them to audio and video formats compatible with the iPod Video (MPEG-4, MP3, AAC or M4A formats). Like most Xillisoft converters, it's very easy to follow and use with a good looking interface to boot. Conversions are fast but most impressive is the quality which is as good as any iPod converter you'll find. The conversion process is very simple - you can choose to either rip and convert a whole film or sections of a film. Apart from this, there are some customisation options too such as setting a file limit for your conversions, normalizing audio or the ability to compress files that have been extracted to fit your iPod - useful for if you've filled your hard drive with too many tunes. You can also customise the audio, subtitles and part of a DVD that you want to rip. If you've got an iPhone, the program has also now been updated to allow you to put films on your hard drive too.

Flexible, simple to convert and fast, Xilisoft DVD to iPod Converter has more than enough to fulfil your conversion needs.

Download Xilisoft DVD to iPod Converter 5.0.40.0729 in Softonic

With multimedia portable devices growing in popularity and features, it's not surprising that DVD ripping tools like Xilisoft DVD Ripper Ultimate have started to offer support for them so that you can take your favorite movies anywhere with you.

Xilisoft DVD Ripper Ultimate is one of those applications: a full featured DVD ripper than can extract all data inside your DVD movies and convert it right away to another video format, including the most popular ones and – of course – video formats for mobile devices such as the iPod, the iPhone and the PSP.

Xilisoft DVD Ripper Ultimate lets you choose the video size, image quality and audio quality, and also create and use different profiles according to the target format or device. Also, Xilisoft DVD Ripper Ultimate lets you trim specific video fragments, edit video effects, adjust subtitles and even add a watermark so that you obtain fully customized DVD video and audio files.

Additionally, Xilisoft DVD Ripper Ultimate can help you clip video segment, crop video size, edit video effects, adjust subtitle, and add video watermark, to get the customized DVD audio and video files.

In addition to ripping the whole DVD, you can also select specific chapters and convert only those. The whole process is done via drop-down menus and Xilisoft DVD Ripper Ultimate is generally very easy to use.

With Xilisoft DVD Ripper Ultimate you can rip the contents of your favorite DVD movies and convert them to different formats – including mobile video - in just a few easy steps.

Download Xilisoft DVD Ripper Ultimate 5.0.40.0729 in Softonic

If you're looking for a powerful high-quality video converter, player, editor for MPEG, QuickTime, and iPod clips then MPEG Streamclip may fit the bill.

Not only that, MPEG Streamclip now edits DivX and can even download the latest DivX releases from the DivX corporation. It's clear that MPEG Streamclip is a multi-faceted utility that can be used to do a variety of things from playing most movie formats and then performing simple editing in terms of Cut, Copy, Paste, and Trimming clips (which isn't much but enough for most of us).

Because the editing feature is so limited however, it may make more sense to import the semi-edited files you have and then import them into a DVD authoring application to burn them to disk or another editing program such as Windows Movie Maker.

MPEG Streamclip is an all in one solution to convert MPEG video to multiple formats, from AVI or QuickTime DV up through MPEG-4 and perform basic editing on them.

Download MPEG Streamclip 1.2 in Softonic

Nero is a mammoth multimedia solution that does just about everything from CD and DVD burning to audio and video editing. This latest version is a bit of a disappointment as it doesn't really bring anything drastically new from version 7. The main improvements are an updated design and reinforced security. Let’s look around at the features available in Nero 8.

This latest version is Windows Vista certified and if you have Microsoft’s latest OS installed you’ll be able to enjoy the Nero sidebar gadget and sleek, clear Vista interface, such as the “Glass” window for StartSmart. Nero Home, the multimedia manager with a DVD menu-like interface, has been slightly improved. Apart from handling all your photos, videos and songs it can also play radio stations and, if you have a TV card set up, play and record TV stations. Furthermore, Nero can stream content to your brand new Xbox 360.

The StartSmart interface is your gateway to all the Nero tools. You can select the individual applications from the left sided menu or choose the file you want to work with (data, audio, photo and video or backup) from the main menu. It’s best to choose the disc type, CD or DVD from the drop-down menu at the top to get the most relevant possibilities. Even though StartSmart gives quick access to all the Nero applications, we found the whole interface too small and cluttered. The window can’t be resized and you need to scroll through to find the tools you need. RSS feeds added to version 8 feel a bit clumsy. They don't show items in a proper feed list and only seem to link back to the Nero help and support pages.

Before it became a full multimedia suite though, Nero was renowned for its burning tools, essentially due to its flagship program, Nero Burning ROM. With it, you can adjust the disc type, set restrictions and control the writing speed. SecurDisc technology has also been added in the latest version to encrypt your CDs or DVDs. If you don’t want to get bogged down in the details, use Nero Express instead to burn your project and design your own disc cover quickly.

Another of the classic Nero apps that has been improved is Nero Showtime. This DVD player boasts support for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, and will save you from upgrading when these formats become the norm. Just use Nero InfoTool beforehand to check if your system can handle these new formats. The program has also seen the introduction of AVCHD playback and authoring technology used in camcorder videos. Support for Windows Media Format DRM is also part of the deal and you can encode videos to play on your iPod, mobile or PlayStation Portable (PSP) thanks to Nero Recode.

Nero’s strength lies in the wealth of multimedia tools it offers to users. You can do just about everything from managing your media to burning CDs and DVDs or editing and watching high quality videos. The latest release has added a number of significant improvements to handle all the latest technological advances like Windows Vista, iPods or the Xbox 360.

Ironically, Nero´s power also contributes to its downfall. Nero packs so many applications into one package that it’s very easy for the common user to get lost in the menus. The size of the suite(600 MBs) and its draining of PC resources also means that you’ll need a high-spec PC to run it smoothly.

It's a bit surprising that Nero decided to jump to version 8 as there's nothing really that new in this latest outing. Once more, Nero will cater to those users looking for a full multimedia suite and not worried about eating up their PC's resources.

Download Nero 8.3.6.0 in Softonic

VSO ConvertXtoDVD is an attractively designed and easy-to-use video burner that gives you the power to convert and burn a huge range of formats.

VSO ConvertXtoDVD can handle just about any format you throw at it including AVI, WMV, MKV, YouTube, OGM, MPEG and Quicktime. So instead of having to watch your downloaded films and videos on your PC, you can watch them in the comfort of your lounge on your DVD Player. VSO ConvertXtoDVD goes much further than just mere DVD creation though because it helps you create and author DVD menus.

It offers the possibility to add background video, image or audio and even have chapter and audio/subtitle menus. If you do want to add subtitles, it supports most of the major formats including SRT, .SUB/ID and .SSA and VSO CovertXtoDVD gives you control over color and font selection, and supports tags like italic, bold and the ability to toggle them on or off with DVD player remote control. The encoder makes a decent job of converting videos in terms of the output quality although it is slightly slow - estimate about 1 hour for conversion of a full movie.

A powerful and easy way to get your favourite movies and video clips onto DVD and give them an extra touch of class with a menu.

Download VSO ConvertXtoDVD 3.1.3.40 in Softonic

There are so many formats out there now that it's hard to find a player that can cater for them all but deliver outstanding quality and playback.

However, one program that surely does is Nero ShowTime which plays just about anything in stunning quality. The program comes with a play control panel that allows you to quick launch into the type of function that you need. So if you need a player or a frame capture tool for your favourite movies, this is your starting point. If it's frames that you want to capture, Nero Showtime can save individual frames in very high quality and saves them in BMP format which is a bit big but it's the only format on offer. This does mean that when you select it as your wallpaper, it can slow down your startup a little but it's probably worth it for the stunning display.

The program comes with a ton of video enhancement features which are mainly responsible for offering the very high quality images but with DivX files, changing the settings can lead to some rendering problems - i.e. playback can become jerky or stuttered.

Nero Showtime is a very powerful DVD player and it plays just about anything. The quality can be superb although you may be less than impressed by its handling of DivX.

Download Nero ShowTime 2.0.0.44 in Softonic

In an age of multiple media players all with different codecs and formats, it's nice to know there's at least one out there that can play just about anything.

Haihaisoft Universal Player supports almost all popular digital media formats and can also play digital media files protected by DRM-X. Amongst the players it can emulate are Windows Media Player, Real Player, Adobe Flash Player, Apple QuickTime Player, PowerDVD and Flash Video (FLV) Player. Whatsmore though, this player embeds itself into Internet Explorer meaning that whenever you are presented with a format compatible with any of these file types, you can watch it instantly. The number of formats it can play is mind-boggling, including those protected by DRM such as WMV(Windows Media Video), WMA(Windows Media Audio), ASF, WMS, DVD, VCD, SVCD, MOV, RM, RMVB, AVI, MPEG, WMV, 3GP, FLV, SWF, MP3, AMR, M4A, ACC, OGG, MIDI, GIF and JPEG file format. Best of all, the program is constantly updated with the latest codecs so you don't need to worry about it suddenly not being able to play files.

A completely free player that supports just about any format imaginable and embeds itself into IE perfectly.

Download Haihaisoft Universal Player 1.0.7.1 in Softonic

DVD protection is advancing at an ever increasing rate but unfortunately for the manufacturers, so are the ripping programs. If you’ve ever had problem’s copying one of your favourite DVD’s (just to make sure you’ve got a backup of course) then DVDFab could be what you’reve been looking for. It has proved popular a hit with thousands of Softonic users so far and there seems little prospect of its popularity waning.

DVDFab is an all-in-one DVD copying/converting/burning software. In just one or two steps, you can copy DVD’s to DVDR/PSP and even iPods. For such a powerful package, it only requires a mere 1.3MB of your hard drive hardrive so its not bulky like similar packages. However, note that this is the ‘lite’ version of the software; and the fully featured Express edition will probably weigh-in at somewhat more than this.

The conversion process itself couldn’t be easier. There are 5 DVD to DVD copy modes available - Full Disc, Main Movie, Split, Customize and Clone. To use any, its simply a matter of inserting your disk and Windows will ask you if you want to open it with DVDFab amongst other programs installed on your PC. In Full Disc mode, all movies, menus and trailers, are copied to a DVD in one click. In “Main Movie” mode, only the movie is copied with your specified audio. In “Split”’ mode, you can copy a DVD-9 onto two DVD-5 discs but also preserve the original menus on both discs. According to the developers, this rare little feature is apparently ideal for TV series DVD’s.

The handy “customize” mode allows you to personalize your DVD’s by recording such things as only your favourite scenes, removing adverts or selecting only certain audio tracks. Finally, “Clone”’ mode allows you to make exact 1:1 bit-to-bit copy of DVDs or even copy games disks such as PS2 DVD’s. There is also a DVD to Mobile option so you can reduce your favourite films to watch on your iPod or other favourite hand held device. Formats available include MPEG-4, DivX, XVID and Mp4.

DVDFab is a tough cookie – even those disks that refuse to be copied with other programmes can usually be cracked. The customise option allows you to get rid of pesky files that stand in your way and just rip the actual movie or essential files. It can also help in reconstituting recovering scratched or dirty disks that don’t play properly in your DVD player anymore. In addition, the ripping speed is remarkably fast. Depending on the size of disk, you can record a new one in less than 10 minutes although the average time is around 30 minutes.

One of the minor drawbacks to this ripper is that the inevitably heavy processing power needed to rip a disk often results in crashes. This will obviously be less of a problem on more powerful machines but on machines with old processors, using DVDFab may become impractical. Many user forums are however full of praise for DVDFab claiming that it can rip more disks and whatsmore, faster than comparable products such as DVD Shrink or ShrinkTo5. At the end of the day, most users consistently report they appreciate the simplicity and power of this rip-roaring ripper.

Download DVDFab HD Decrypter 5.0.3.0 in Softonic

Far from being just office workhorses, computers are also thought of as complete entertainment systems that you can use to chat with friends, play videogames or watch movies. Regarding this last option, there's a wide range of DVD players out there, but we'll focus our attention on one of them: Power DVD.

The program's installation process is very quick. It includes Google Toolbar as an add-on but you can decline its installation if you're not interested. Once launched, you gain access to its main interface which, to be honest, is not especially nice: a close-up of a girl wearing weird sunglasses is not the kind of thing you expect to see on the screen when opening a DVD player. It would look much better with some abstract design or just the program logo instead. Anyway, configuration settings allow you to customize this interface with skins but there are no skins included. At least you can change the color scheme by clicking on the display.

Power DVD is generally very easy to use. All the buttons on the player panel have tooltips to give you hints about their usage. Also, most of their functions can be performed with the mouse or the keyboard (using the hotkey displayed in the tooltip). When playing a movie in full screen mode, the panel hides automatically and shows only if you move the mouse. Still, you can access all the program's functions through a comprehensive context menu by right-clicking anywhere on the image.

As for the playing functions, the movie flows very smoothly even when you move the window around or play it in full screen mode. Sound can be configured in different ways, depending on your hardware means (from headphones to an 8-speaker surround system) in order to obtain the best possible sound quality. During our tests, we also found some interesting tools: one offers the possibility to change playing speed and therefore obtain slow or fast motion images; another one lets you take snapshots of your favourite scenes in the movie, according to the settings in Configuration – Player – Advanced - Snapshot; and finally a tool called "Say it again" with which you can repeat certain dialogues over and over again. This may be useful for foreign language students or movie fans who like to learn certain script lines by heart.

Power DVD is then a perfect solution for your all DVD playing needs. It may seem quite simple at first sight but after all, you don't need much more apart from "play" and "pause" to happily watch a movie on your PC. And in case you want to know more about the program and their developers, have a look at our interview with Dr. Jau Huang, Cyberlink's founder.

Download PowerDVD 8.0.1730 in Softonic

Despite being known mainly as a music player, the iPod has evolved into supporting video as well which means it's also a great device to watch videos on the move.

But before that, you need to convert your videos with ImTOO DVD to iPod Converter, a powerful video conversion tool that has been especially developed for iPods and iPhones. The program supports the popular video formats for iPod (MP4) plus MP3 and AAC, all of them categorized in several profiles to meet different requirements in size, audio quality, video quality and other settings. You can create your own customized profiles as well.

ImTOO DVD to iPod Converter can convert video from DVD discs or IFO files on your hard drive. Also, you can choose between converting the whole movie or just some selected chapters. Just make sure there's enough space on your device!

With ImTOO DVD to iPod Converter you can easily convert DVD videos to iPod format and watch your favorite movies on the go.

Download ImTOO DVD to iPod Converter 5.0.35.0515 in Softonic

As multimedia portable devices grow in popularity and include more advanced features, DVD ripping tools have started offering support for them so that you can watch your favorite movies on the go.

ImToo DVD Ripper Platinum is among them. This application is a complete DVD ripper that extracts all the contents of your favorite DVD movies and converts them right away to another format, including the most common audio and video formats and – of course –for mobile devices such as the iPod, the iPhone and the PSP. The program works both with DVD discs and IFO files stored on your drive.

All available formats are presented as profiles with their own characteristics, but you may as well create your own user-defined profile by selecting the video size, image quality, audio quality and channels on the right-side pane and then saving it as a new profile.

ImToo DVD Ripper Platinum features a nice interface with a skins menu that unfortunately it's empty, so you can't really change or customize it in any way.

ImToo DVD Ripper Platinum is an attractive DVD ripper, especially designed for portable devices, which makes the whole ripping process easy even for a newcomer to video conversion.

Download ImTOO DVD Ripper Platinum 5.0.35.0515 in Softonic

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.

Download Magic Swf2Avi 5.0.8.408 in Softonic

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.

Download MPlayer 1.2 in Softonic

Kat MP3 recorder is a powerful and free, sound recorder for your computer. It is very user friendly and all the options available to set the sound quality and the file formats are visible from the main program view, making it very easy to use.

The interesting feature of this program is that you can record any sound that is passing through your computer, which includes phone calls with Skype or other VoIP programs, your favourite internet radio programs or even game soundtracks. With this versatility, Kat MP3 recorder can replace many different recording programs previously used to record just phone calls, or internet audio streaming.

The application worked well during my test, but I had to select a sound quality of 192Kbps in the format settings to obtain a decent quality for the recordings. Lowers settings seem to make the sound too distorted for my tastes. You can save your recordings as MP3 files, but also WMA, OGG, VOX and many others.

Kat MP3 recorder is useful, free and easy to use. It can record any sound passing through your computer's sound card and saves it in 7 different formats. Record phone calls or your favorite radio programs to create your own personal audio collection.

Download Kat MP3 Recorder 1.1 in Softonic

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.

Download ImTOO MP4 Converter 3.1.53 in Softonic

RealPlayer is so ubiquitous that the really is no getting away from it even though it's widely criticised as being too commercial and too bloated. However, you can't avoid the fact that it's an essential piece of software if you're surfing the internet regularly.

It is indeed bloated, intrusive but RealPlayer has alot of functionality - it can do a hell of a lot from streaming radio and video to burning CD's but it's often slow and cumbersome. One of the most annoying aspects is that it takes simply ages to start whether streaming a clip or just opening a standalone video file. This is because all of the hundreds of extensions and plugins that come preinstalled with it. There are also too many clicks and mouse movements required just to switch to a full-screen playback mode when viewing a clip on a web page.

In saying this, Realplayer isn't bad at all. It's comparable to Windows Media Player 10 as they both have some impressive ways of organising your music and for me the best feature is the CD burner which is one of the easiest burners I've ever used.

Like it or loathe it, as proprietors of the Real networks codecs, RealPlayer is here to stay for a long time to come

Download RealPlayer 11.0.0.442 in Softonic

DVD Audio Extractor is a powerful software DVD audio extracting / ripping tool. It can help you to extract audio streams from your favorite DVDs and save them as OGG, MP3 or Wave files. DVD Audio Extractor can also demux audio streams directly to PCM, MPA, AC3 or DTS files.

DVD Audio Extractor features on its easy-to-use interface, ultra-fast extracting speed, rich audio formats support, multi-channel capability, resample to arbitrary sample rate, audio preview and much more. It's all what you needed to get audios out of DVD-Video discs, so that you can listen on MP3 Player, play on PC, record to CD or do anything else.

Download DVD Audio Extractor 4.3.0 in Softonic

Many portable devices feature video capabilities, but not everyone takes advantage of them as you usually need to convert video files to another format and there's no easy way to do it.

XviD4PSP solves this problem by providing you with an intuitive, easy-to use tool that lets you convert almost any kind of video file to a wide range of formats, including those that most portable video devices (iPod, iPhone, PSP) work with. The program features a highly detailed settings window where you'll be able to configure every single detail about the video conversion. In fact, it's such a complete configuration menu that it'll take you some time to tweak it properly.

XviD4PSP includes an embedded video player where you can preview the video file before applying any change to it. Note that the program requires some extra tools to work but they come bundled with the installation file. And in case you get any warning messages about missing components, you'll probably do fine by just installing a coded pack.

The program features a nicely designed interface, but if there's something I especially enjoyed about XviD4PSP is the huge array of supported video formats. It works with pretty much anything you can play as a video!

In all, XviD4PSP is a powerful tool that comes in very handy for those of you who like to watch movies on the move and therefore need to convert video files very often.

Download XviD4PSP 5.0.30 in Softonic

You probably have lots of different videos and films on your computer you would like to play on your home DVD player. Unfortunately, many DVD players can only read the standard DVD format and it's therefore a waste of resources to burn DVDs with avi, mpeg or wmv files.

DVD Flick comes in handy because it converts PC video files to a proper DVD format, readable by all standard devices. The final file size is much bigger than the original, for example: a 600mb requires a whole DVD. The conversion process is also very slow, but you can leave the program working while you use other applications, as you can select the priority your system gives to the conversion software. The final result will be an audio_ts and a video_ts folder, which is the standard for all DVDs and you can also chose to create an iso file which can be burned again at a later date. It would have been good to have the possibility to add subtitles but unfortunately this feature is missing.

If you are patient enough, DVD Flick is the perfect solution for burning your holiday movie to DVD, meaning that whatever DVD player your friends or family have, they’ll have no escape from your not-quite-Oscar-winning production.

This is a reliable program that does what it's meant to but at the end of the day, DVD Flick is really only going to be useful to people without a multi-format DVD player.

Download DVD Flick 1.2.2.0 in Softonic

Photo editing applications are ten-a-penny these days. Besides the scores of programs that are freely available for download or to buy, you normally get some kind of image manipulation software bundled with your digital camera, scanner, etc. However, if you're new to the image editing or digital photography game then you may find that many of these applications are either too complicated or just downright garbage.

PhotoImpression sets its stall out as a powerful, feature-filled photo editing application that doesn't make creating classy graphics too difficult to achieve. It has to be said that it pulls this off pretty well, and its colourful interface manages to marry some of the advanced features of programs like Photoshop with the simplicity of an app like the GIMP or IrfanView.

The GUI is laid out in a way that leads you intuitively through the process of organizing, enhancing, and creating interesting looking photos and graphics, whether it's to share on the web, email to your pals, or print out. Clicking each of the tabs that represent these stages of production will bring up a series of controls that help you perform a variety of tasks, from fixing problem photos to applying effects and frames to your images.

It would have been nice to see support for more advanced manipulation tools such as layers and gradients in PhotoImpression, but for someone who's just retouching or revamping their snaps, this is ideal. The application performs admirably compared to the wonderful, if strangely-named, GIMP. However, perhaps the key difference with this and its open source rival is you must part with cash for the full version of PhotoImpression.

Download ArcSoft PhotoImpression 6.5 in Softonic