Any Video Converter Free Crashes After 1 Second

[elling]

This has been happening a lot with a number of different video files. I have version 5.7.9.0 of AVC Free and when I add a file (WMV) and click convert it will run for 1 second, show "Complete" and then deposit the "converted" file into the Destination folder. This "converted" file is essentially "blank"as there is nothing for it to play (using either WMP or VLC). Maybe this isn't exactly the definition of "crashing" but I don't know how else to phrase it. Occasionally, if I restart my computer (Win 7 Pro) AVC Free will correctly convert 1 file but it then starts to misbehave and falsely "complete" the conversion all over.

I have no idea what to do now. I don't mind trying another converter but it needs to be free. I have tried VidCoder but I apparently don't understand how to properly crop - I'm trying to crop the right & left and upper & lower black bars. Thanks in advance for any advice!

[Baldrick]

Have you tried convert to different formats to see if it makes any difference? Or else try contact the developers and see if they have any support.


But why doesn't the crop work as you like in vidcoder? You can also use handbrake, but the cropping looks similar in it.

You can also try other free encoders like xmedia recode, freemake video converter (ADWARE), Format FActory (ADWARE).

[redwudz]

Some converters balk at video filenames with spaces or odd characters. Or very long filenames or files that are buried layers deep in folders.
Just something to check.

[elling]

Have you tried convert to different formats to see if it makes any difference? Or else try contact the developers and see if they have any support.

Thanks, I'll try this.

But why doesn't the crop work as you like in vidcoder? You can also use handbrake, but the cropping looks similar in it.

I have tried using VidCoder to crop but I must've done something wrong b/c the converted file looked exactly the same as the original. I seem to have lost the Preset so I am just confused.

You can also try other free encoders like xmedia recode, freemake video converter (ADWARE), Format FActory (ADWARE).

I actually use Freemake but it doesn't always get rid of the black bars. I really like AVC's cropping window where I can see what parts of the video will be cropped.

[Krispy Kritter]

VidCoder will auto crop black bars when you input a video file and it will display how many lines (top, bottom, left, and/or right) are being removed. To manually crop, you simply untick auto and add the number of lines you want removed. After you add the number of lines, you can click the preview button to see the output.

[Hoser Rob]

I get the impression the problem here is with .wmv files from the original post. I don't know the source of them but they don't all contain the same video format.

For example, I've tried to convert some .wmv files that were actually VC-1 (Microsoft) video according to mediainfo. Almost every encoder I tried choked on them, including avidemux, which comes with a damn good codec library. That video format and 24 bit audio streams are the only things I've tried that aviodemux wouldn't work with.

The only thing that worked in that case was Openshot ... I'm a linux user so that isn't a windows solution because it hasn't been ported. But any mencoder GUI (or just CLI mencoder) would probably work on that format.

Definitely install mediainfo ... it's one of the essential apps for media ... and learn about formats, codecs, & containers. And try other converters. I never tried AVC when I ran windows because everything I could find from good sources indicated it's pure shite.

[hello_hello]

For example, I've tried to convert some .wmv files that were actually VC-1 (Microsoft) video according to mediainfo. Almost every encoder I tried choked on them, including avidemux, which comes with a damn good codec library. That video format and 24 bit audio streams are the only things I've tried that aviodemux wouldn't work with.

Chances are most of the freeware programs including AnyVideoConverter and AVIDemux use ffmpeg/libavcodec for decoding so they can probably all open the same formats, and ffmpeg supports VC1. AVIDemix hasn't been updated in a while (stable version) so maybe the ffmpeg files were a bit out of date.

elling,
It does sound like the conversion process is failing. You'd imagine AnyVidoConverter would offer some sort of error, or at least provide some info via a log file.
You could try Video To Video Converter. It's a similar program to AnyVideoConverter. In theory it'll open and convert just about any format (although I just realised it's not been updated in a couple of years).