I was looking to convert an FLV from vimeo into mpeg2 for a home DVD project. [I'm putting together a birthday DVD for the grandparents with quips from my daughters, and needed fireworks, and vimeo had better samples to supplement what my special effects department could create; in case you wanted context.]

I couldn't find much about Vimeo specifically (most posts are related to putting stuff on vimeo, not taking stuff off), but eventually found SUPER. While the program looks great, I was scared by the size (anything that big sounds like bloat-ware), but it seems to run fairly well. SUPER played the files well (better than the flash plugin to IE played them--my laptop is several years old), but didn't convert. Selected FFmpeg, and putting attributes as close to DVD as reasonable, it would only convert a few seconds of video, then go to some god-awful compression blocks of random weird green colors--imagine seeing the 4 seconds of aurara borealis at 60 bps. I even tried the DirectShow decode, it's still craps out like that.

Looking further, I tried WinFF, the graphical front end to FFmpeg. It worked great with the vimeo files, and created exactly what I needed. Even the options of going 16:9 or 4:3 are helpful. I love the program, being able to see what it's doing running the command line. I highly recommend.

So, my post is to share my experience, but also ask if there is anything I might have done wrong with SUPER? Am I best in just going forward with WinFF?

Thanks!
Tim