Have you ever wanted a software which can help you convert a certain video or audio format to another easily? Have you wanted to resize your video files smaller so that you can send it to your friends through email? Have you ever wanted to extract only audio from video files? And you have no money to buy an expensive software to do all that? Well, let me now introduce to you yet another open source software called Media Coder. Yes, this software can do all these and more!

The most important feature of this software is that it can convert one “type” of video files to another. So let’s say you have a video file encoded in Xvid and you would like to convert it to Divx for your Divx enabled player, you can use this software to do just that. And it supports a huge range of video types like Xvid, Divx, H.264, Flash, WMV and so on. It even converts Realmedia files which can be problematic for a lot of converters! Lo and behold, it now comes with a “Device Edition”! It’s like a set of pre-defined settings for Media Coder. So if you are using it to convert a file which is readable by let’s say, PSP or iPod, you can make use of the Device Edition to easily convert files without the need to change or configure complex settings. Very useful for people like me who can’t differentiate one format from another or couldn’t care less about it.

However, if you are a control freak, Media Coder can be your best friend as well. It allows you to edit or change various settings. This allows you to control the final output of your audio or video file so that you can create the best possible quality with maximum compression (or smallest size).

I am using Media Coder for several purposes, one of which is to extract audio from video files. I have extract theme songs which I like from movies or sometimes to extract a certain dialogue. Very useful indeed. However, Media Coder did crash on me several times when it is doing certain jobs. I am not sure what causes it and it seemed to be random. Although I won’t exactly say that Media Coder is difficult to use, even for a newbie, but it’s interface can be confusing and even complicated. And it doesn’t come with a wizard. But seriously, it shouldn’t be that hard to figure out all the parts of the software.

If you find this software useful, please help the authours by either donating a few bucks or you could tell others about it.