Monday, September 04, 2006

Free Online Media File Converter

I came across a free audio file conversion utility the other day and, given that it was available in both Windows and Mac versions, I thought I'd share it with a wider audience. Then I thought I'd have a sniff around the net for something similar as an online service, no apps required, and I hit this site…

Media-Convert Online  Service - This is a free service that will convert any file up to 50Mb in size, The range of file types it will handle is pretty impressive - documents, text files, movies, sounds, images (including vector types), ringtones (mono and polyphonic) and even compressed archives.

I could list all the convertion possibilites but that's a load of filetype tables. For example - you could convert all Open Office filetypes to their corresponding Microsoft Office equivalents, convert files into universal formats like Adobe PDF, PS (PostScript) or CSV to print, fax or simply read them, insert a PDF into your web site by converting it into an SWF Flash file, export a Microsoft Access database to an Excel table, capture a website as an image, encode a text file with UTF-8 codes or with one of 900 other charsets or even learn morse code with the text to morse converter.

It also offers some extra editing possibilites for sound and image files. For example you can resize an image and, if you're outputting GIF, JPEG or PNG, then you can choose the compression level and number of colours. As for sound files, you can crop a sound file by giving a start and end time for the conversion. Depending on the sound format, you may also change other options like method, quality, bitrate, encoding, sample rate, channels, noise filter, bits per sample, etc.

I almost forgot! Here's the free audio file converter I mentioned at the start…

Switch Sound File Conversion Apple CompatibleWindows Compatible - This is a free audio file format converter for Mac OS X and Windows. It can convert a variety of audio file formats such as wav, mp3, ogg, flac, aac, wma, au, aiff, ogg, msv, dvf, vox, atrac, gsm, dss, plus more.

Basically, Switch on a Windows computer can open most other formats which can be decoded by Windows Media Player and Switch on a Mac computer can open most other formats which can be decoded by QuickTime. It can save files in wav, mp3, au, aif/aiff, gsm, vox, raw, ogg, flac, aac, m4a and .mov (Mac only).

Now you can always use Apple iTunes to do a bit of audio file conversion but, as well as converting a large range of formats, Switch can batch convert up to 32,000 files at a time.

7 comments:

yaksu said...

Thank you your help...

Michele Avanti said...

Switch is not free, I don't get why everyone says it is, you download it, use it for a while and one day got to use it and it says your free trial is up and they want you to buy it. After experiencing this, I refuse to buy it. I do not like participating with misleading advertising by companies and I am shocked to see just how many people think it is free. Perhaps they have just changed their practice but folks Switch is not free!

Allan Ogg said...

I see what you mean but they are pretty clear in their FAQ, advanced features are disabled after 14 days. See extract below.

Q. Is the Switch Converter really free?

Yes, we offer a free version of Switch.

The free version of Switch also has the additional features of Switch Plus enabled for a 14-day free trial after the software is first installed. If you choose not to purchase the Switch Plus licence upgrade at the end of the free trial period, the advanced features will be disabled but the standard Switch features will continue to work.

Anonymous said...

Swich is definitely free to a degree. As the last guy just said.
After 14 days there are some formats that you won't be able to convert to.
But you can convert to the basic formats forever.
I wish people would read things before they start making accusations that are not correct and miss inform others.
I work for NCH and can vouch that you are able to convert after the 14 days. Just not into any format you like.

Anonymous said...

The "free" version of Switch does NOT convert *from* specific files after their little trial window, unlike the company man implies above. Michele is right--this is very misleading advertising. I am NOT impressed with this Switch promoting.

Andy,Connie and Ray said...

Ok, I agree with Switch being free!!
I was impressed, EXCEPT, I tried to convert a .msv to a .mp3, as it says it will do and the files will not add to the inbox. Any suggestions?

Anonymous said...

You CANNOT convert at MSV file with the FREEWARE version.