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.

Download Droppix DVD Maker 1.5.0 in Softonic

If you have a large collection of videos and a video-capable portable device, this might be the perfect app for you.

ImTOO MPEG Encoder Ultimate provides you with a straightforward tool to convert video files between a wide array of formats, with special attention to mobile devices, handheld consoles and multimedia players such as iPod, iPhone, iRiver and Zune. All supported formats are saved as profiles that you simply choose from a drop-down list, though you can also create your own format profiles by tweaking a few settings.

Besides converting, ImTOO MPEG Encoder Ultimate includes some extra tools with which you preview the video, take a snapshot, add special effects, trim the image or even add a watermark to it. Too bad the program was so unstable during our tests: it crashed every now and then without any apparent reason.

Despite these crashes, ImTOO MPEG Encoder Ultimate is a very complete video converting tool that well deserves a try.

Download ImTOO MPEG Encoder 5.0.9.9 Ultimate in Softonic

AVIAddXSubs is a simple-to-use, free program that incorporates subtitles (XSUB) from .srt (ANSI text, up to 8 srt) or idx/sub (containing up to 8 subtitles) into AVI files containing DivX/XVid video streams.

It works simply by placing the AVI and SRT file into the same directory as the videos you want to play. Your media player should automatically detect them when you open the file. However, what AVIAddXSubs can do is merge the subtitles directly into the video that's going to be played.

This doesn't mean that every time you play the film the subtitles will show however. You still need to activate them within the player that you're using. After this, you can delete the SRT file as it's no longer needed since it has been "burned" into the video. However, sometimes you will find that the subtitles simply do not appear. If this happens, you'll probably have to configure the positioning of subtitles in your video player.

AVIAddXSubs is a great way to avoid needing to include an SRT file with every video you want to view subtitles with but you may have problems locating your subtitles once they've been "burned" in.

Download AVIAddXSubs 8.0 in Softonic

Have you ever wanted to search for and download your favourite videos without using your browser? Free FLV Converter lets you automatically access sites such as YouTube, DailyMotion, Google and Metacafé without opening anything else.

You can search by keyword and preview each video found in the rather basic interface and also download them in FLV format. After that, you can convert the files to AVI, IPod, IPhone, 3GP or PSP format. It also works vice versa and if the files in question are already in FLV format, it can convert to DivX, Xvid, MPEG, DVD and AVI with automatic HTML embed links. This means you can paste them into your website or blog to share instantly with the world. If you don't require these functions, the program interface still provides a convenient search platform because you can browse and watch videos at the same time. With just one click, you can download the video you are previewing. For ease of use, it allows you to create a download list of videos you want to save. Once it's complete, you can just leave the program to download the videos whilst you get on with something else although unfortunately, it still doesn't support batch downloading.

A very useful application for those who are not content with only having videos on the Internet but also want them on their hard drive but don't want to visit each video content site seperately.

Download Free FLV Converter 5.6 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 5.0.9.0 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 BS.Player Free 2.31.974 in Softonic

The ALShow codecs included movie player lets your watch all your videos, movies, and DVDs without searching for video codecs or audio codecs. From AVI to XviD, playing movies is first-click easy with codecs for all popular video, audio, and movie formats. ALShow also recognizes codecs that you do not have and automatically helps instantly install the right codecs. ALShow loads movies fast and plays movies smoothly.

No more video playback stuttering. Audio, video, and screen captures let you save portions of movies to share with friends. You can also import them to your favorite audio or video editor. Video looping lets you repeat parts of a movie. Captions and subtitles are supported for monitor and TV output. The ESC key hides ALShow when you are supposed to do homework. Click the tray icon to resume playing your DVD movie or video.

Download ALShow 1.62 Beta 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

Portable VLC media player is the popular VLC media player packaged as a portable app, so you can take your audio and video files along with everything you need to play them on the go. It reads all types of formats like MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, XviD, WMV, DVDs, VCDs and streaming.

Download Portable VLC Media Player 0.8.6i in Softonic

With the number of portable multimedia devices constantly growing, converting tools are becoming increasingly more important for the average user.

If what you want to convert is videos, Plato Video Converter is the tool you need. This neat video converter supports the most popular video formats, including those used on mobile devices such as mobile phones, iPod, iPhone, PSP, Zune and more.

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 tweak the conversion options to meet your needs: video size, bitrate, frame rate, aspect ratio and a lot more. The program also includes a built-in player to preview the video.

I liked the simplicity of use and the wide range of formats supported by Plato Video Converter. On the downside, the interface is a bit too dull and has no general option other that being able to set to automatically shut down the computer when the conversion is finished.

If you want to convert your favorite videos to other formats with fully customizable settings, this is the tool you need.

Download Plato Video Converter 7.76 in Softonic

Ultra DVD Creator is a powerful and handy tool to create DVD VCD SVCD Video Disc from almost all formats of video files including AVI DivX XVid MP4 MPEG DAT ASF WMV MOV QT, So you can play movies on your home DVD Player. It is a revolutionary and versatile DVD creator.

With this software, you can convert any video files to DVD VCD SVCD compatible mpeg file and burn to CD or DVD disc.Use this software to create VCD/DVD from your digital video recorder, Webcam, or downloaded files. You can create video VCD/DVD disc freely without any special knowledge in this field, every thing it left you is easy.

Download Ultra DVD Creator 2.4.0622 in Softonic

Movie DVD Maker is a high speed and easy-to-use video DVD VCD SVCD maker, creating DVD VCD SVCD disc from all video files, so you can play your movies at your leisure on your home DVD player.

Supports a wide selection of input formats: AVI, DIVX, XVID, MP4, MPG, WMV, ASF, MOV, QT etc. Converts your movie files to DVD VCD SVCD format using our fast High-Quality Mpeg1/2 encoder and then burn to DVD VCD SVCD Disc with High-Speed burner engine.

Download Movie DVD Maker 2.4.0622 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

YouTube is undoubtedly the biggest video site on the internet and one of these business success stories of the decade.

However, with copyrighted content increasingly being removed, the only way to save your favourite clips is to download them onto your hard drive. YouTube Downloader is a software that helps you download videos instantly and convert them into other video formats. The program is incredibly easy to use - just specify the URL for the video you want to download and click the Ok button. It also allows you to convert downloaded videos for Ipod, Iphone, PSP, Cell Phone, Windows Media, XVid and MP3 which is useful for taking your films on the move. The converter is a bit slow but it's a nice add on to have. One problem you may have is that when you've downloaded the clip, you may have no sound. This is easily remedied by downloading a codec which can be found on the developer website.

For those worried about the disappearance of their favourite clips from YouTube or those that just want an archive, YouTube Downloader is an ultra easy to use and efficient option.

Download YouTube Downloader 2.1.6 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

Videos on TV Deluxe enables you to create a fully customizable slideshow containing your favorite videos and background music, plus a personalized selection of filters, special effects and transition effects that can add the final touch to your composition. The whole process is really easy to complete, even for people that have never used a similar tool.

The program's interface is divided into several areas: one displays the folder structure on your system so that you can select the content you want to include in the slideshow; another one displays the video selected at that very moment; and finally the timeline is where you can drag and drop everything you want to add to the slideshow. There's also a built-in player that lets you preview effects and animations, as well as the slideshow in itself while you're working on it. The good thing is that you can work not only with the video files you store in your hard drive, but also with videos imported right from your video camera and even Youtube videos.

Videos on TV Deluxe includes a ton of special effects, filters and transition effects to spice up your presentation. Once finished, you can export the slideshow to high quality video (with an impressive range of available formats) or record it directly to DVD. The only drawback is that the file weighs more than 400 MB, meaning it takes a while to download and run, and it's quite heavy on system resources.

Download Videos on TV Deluxe 2008 Deluxe in Softonic

This product is intended for quick, easy, and simple processing of one or several Video, Audio, or Image files! VideoCharge is a full-range editor, which allows users to perform practically any operations with incoming files such as:

• Splitting files up into several scenes
• Merging several files into a single file
• Cutting scene(s) out of video files
• Creating video file(s) based on selected scene(s)
• Creating thumbnails for video files in manually or automatically mode
• Addition Watermark to movie(s) or thumbnail(s)
• Solving Interlace Video problem

Using VC you can split a video film by time, by size, into several equal (by duration) parts. Besides you can automatically split video file by scenes! VideoCharge includes enhanced DVD Ripper and DVD Player, which are intended, except processing DVD contents, to play and convert Mpeg-2, VOB files (.vob), and also to work with a group of VOB files, using index information from IFO files.

VideoCharge allows users to produce video files with effect of 25th frame. VideoCharge is the best application among similar ones to create Video galleries, representing an ability of FTP upload of generated files. It also supports work with command-line. VideoCharge includes a complete Help system and Wizard, which makes your work with VideoCharge simpler, even if you don't have special knowledge!

Download VideoCharge Pro 3.14.2.03 in Softonic

ImTOO DVD to MP4 Converter is a fast, easy to use DVD to MP4 ripper which helps you rip DVD's, convert DVD's to MP4, AVI, MPEG4, DivX, XviD, Apple TV video and PSP AVC video format. With formats changing and developing all the time, a new profile of PSP AVC video in 480 X 272 (PSPEXT) has been added, while the profile of Apple TV video has been improved to improve playback.

The output movie is playable on most portable media players (MP4 players that is) which the developers say includes Archos AV500, Archos AV700, Archos Gmini402, iRiver PMP-100, Creative Zen Vision, PSP and iPod, etc.

The problem with many similar converters is that there are few customisation settings for those that need extra control over how their video comes out. ImToo DVD to Mp4 Converter does not disappoint here offering tons of options over such things as the aspect ratio, compression format used and other technical settings.

As a result, this program is not really suitable for those that just want a simple Mp4 conversion but is a solid product for those that need a bit more control over the output file.

Download ImTOO DVD to MP4 Converter 5.0.35.0515 in Softonic

Kantaris is a polished multimedia player that enables you to play files in a wide variety of formats. It features a simple but nicely designed interface with not many configuration options which makes it very easy to use.

Videos can be played in full screen mode with control panel only appearing when you move the mouse. As for music, Kantaris offers four visualization modes that add a touch of color to your songs. However we noticed that if you show the playlist, the visualization is not properly centered. Another problem we had with the playlist is the fact that you can only add tracks one by one.

Download Kantaris 0.3.6 in Softonic

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.

Download AVI ReComp 1.4.1 in Softonic