Online Converting Tools
March 29, 2008 by Steve Yuen
Besides Media-convert.com I reviewed in my last post, there are two other excellent video converting services. They are YouConvertIt and Zamzar. Both of Web services can be one stop conversion shop that lets you covert WAV to MP3, JPEG to TIFF, DOC to HTML, and AVI to MP4. Both sites will convert the file and send you a link via email where you can download the newly converted file. They are free to use and there is no need to download anything.
Zamza is a free online file conversion tool. Zamzar can convert your video, audio, images, and documents from nearly any format to nearly any format you like. The file conversion process takes only a few minutes. Up to five files can be converted simultaneously. When the conversion process is completed, Zamzar e-mails you a link to the converted file. The files are kept on the servers of Zamzar for 24 hours. The maximum file size is 100 MB, but there are no limits on the number of files converted. If you sign up for an account with Zamzar though you can upload files up to 1 GB in size. ZamZar can convert between 8 image formats, 16 document formats, 9 audio formats, 13 video formats, and 9 compressed formats.
Zamzar is very easy to use and has a better interface and design than Media-convert. However, Media-convert also allows input files to be locally stored or from a URL, saving users an extra step if a file is on the Internet. Also, Media-convert converts the file while you wait, and gives a download link on screen when the process is completed. Since no registration is required, users are not required to give up an email address as they are with Zamzar and YouconvertIt.
YouConvertIt is a Web-based file conversion service with a Web 2.0 touch. Like Zamzar, YouConvertIt lets you upload audio, video, image, or document files and convert from one format to another. All you need to do is select the file from your computer, select your target format, and the file will be uploaded and converted. Once the conversion is complete, you will receive an e-mail containing a link to allow you to download it within 7 days. YouConvertIt offers a large range of file conversions with 8 audio (AAC, MP3, WAV,..) 72 image (JPG, GIF, PNG, …), 13 video (AVI, WMV, 3GP, MP4, …) and 46 document types (.DOC, .PDF, …). You can convert up to 5 files at a time.
Unlike Zamzar, YouConvertIt does not have a file size limit. Furthermore, you can convert measurement units like size, area, distance, time, velocity, mass, etc and has an online media download manager for Youtube, Metacafe and Google videos. To download videos from Youtube, Metacafe and Google, you simply enter the URL of the file and then either convert it directly or download it to your computer.
Both of Zamar and YouConvertIt are fast and convenient. They are useful, particularly when converting flash movies to MP4 for viewing on an iPod. They are great tools for teachers and students who need to convert a file and do not have a good desktop program.
YouConvertIt and Zamzar: these two are fantastic tools online. I still remember several days ago when I first found the website: Media-convert.com which can also help people to convert files online, I was so appreciate. Now, I believe that there is always better stuff coming. Internet can always surprise you. It is right the time to know this because nowadays we really need to convert a file between formats for one reason or another, usually because of the compatible issues: your particular program doesn’t support a particular format. Rather than hunting around for a file conversion program, there now exists these kinds of websites.
Through using these kinds of websites, we have the option to choose between a very large variety of file formats which include audio, document, image, video and archive file types. I do not know if you realize that we can add up to five files at a time throughYouConvertIt and also through Zamzar we can upload up to 100 MB file in for conversion. Furthermore, we can even add a URL that links to a file online which we want to convert. Another surprise is that It also provides an option for sending files to a recipients email address.
We can also bookmark it, there is an option for us to bookmark the site. We even do not need to leave that page for bookmaking: there is a button for bookmarking at the bottom.
I am very thankful for this blog on online converting tools. I am always running into problems within my classroom where I need to convert files to a different format, especially when I want my students to add music to PowerPoint or use a different application program that is not compatible with Office XP. One program I use to convert music files is Switch. It is a pretty good converter, but it does not offer as many conversion types as Zamia or YouConvertIt.
I tested Zamia and it is amazing. I converted an Office 2007 file (docx) to Office XP file (doc); I had no problems converting the document, and there was no problem with the format of my document. All I had to do was put in my e-mail address, watch the file conversion, and wait for the converted file to be sent to my e-mail address. Zamia is wonderful because it can convert a 100MB file and it is fast. I received an e-mail within a few minutes. I found Zamia to be very user friendly and easy to use. I am going to explore MediaConverter and YouConvertIt also to learn how to use these amazing converters. I cannot wait to share this information with colleagues and my students. Even though I have a lot of things to teach, on our free days I love to show my students all the new technology I have learned. So whatever I have learned in IT780, my students will also learn. I know my students will be very excited about these free file conversion websites. From looking at the graphic (YouConvertIt) under the post, it looks very easy to use. MediaConverter seems like it converts every type of file. I am so excited about this technology that I am going to use all three websites to do file conversions.
These tools are awesome. I often find myself having to convert files. I’ve had several students come to me needing their video files converted because their digital camera saved it has a file format they can’t use and they need to import it into MovieMaker. I will definitely be using these tools. I have often found myself needing to convert documents as well. I usually convert any Word documents I put on the Web to PDF documents and usually use a different tool to do this, but I like the idea of having one place where I can convert all types of files.
I am happy to be able to recommend these sites to others as well. Our new podcasting application that we created is going to restrict users to certain file types, but now I can include in the training resources such as these Web sites so if they have a file type that is not supported they can easily convert their file so they can upload it. This will save me the time of having to do it for them.
I really like that you can have the file e-mailed to you, but it might cause some issues depending on the size of the file. It would also be nice if these sites offered compression tools as well, then you could compress your file and convert it at the same time. In the process of conversion it could really go either way, depending on what you are converting to, it could make the file size larger or smaller.
Multimedia is more than one concurrent presentation medium (for example, on CD-ROM or a Web site). Although still images are a different medium than text, multimedia is typically used to mean the combination of text, sound, and/or motion video. Some people might say that the addition of animated images (for example, animated GIF on the Web) produces multimedia, but it has typically meant one of the following.
However, multimedia tends to imply sophistication (and relatively more expense) in both production and presentation than simple text-and-images. Multimedia presentations are possible in many contexts, including the Web, CD-ROMs, and live theater.