Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate 6.5 review: Robust, fast, and feature-rich

Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate is an easy and capable ideo conversion utility, but it faces stiff competition from free software such as Freemake Video Converter, as well as pro-level programs such as Sorenson Squeeze 9. At $60, its integrated disc authoring and burning may not be enough to entice users away from the freebies.

Professional in power, yet easy to use, the Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate interface makes short work of even batch operations.

Wondershare's interface is wonderfully easy without seeming childish. Drag a file to the program window, select a destination device from the drop-down list on the right, and click on the convert button. There's a large selection of Apple and Samsung devices, a decent selection of Motorola devices, and then...nothing.  Owners of HTC and other brands of devices need to know their format and resolution and select from the list of those that Wondershare also provides.

Video Converter Ultimate can convert multiple videos at once, and preview them all for you while transcoding in small video windows to their left. I found the program roughly equal in performance to the modern competition, though it's not quite as quick with large batches as Sorenson Squeeze 9.

Disc authoring and burning is integrated.

Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate no longer rips commercial DVDs, but it will still author and burn. It's handy to have these capabilities under the same roof. There's a decent selection of menu templates, and you can change the text and background image as well as add your own music to the menu.

You may also download and convert video from the Web. Wondershare provides an add-on for the major browsers, and you can also cut and paste a URL into the program. I didn't have a lot of luck with the plug-in/add-on outside of YouTube, but the program downloaded from a wide variety of Web site URLs emplying Flash video, but not Silverlight.

Wondershare also includes a very capable and smart-looking video player which rivals VLC for features and format support. It actually seemed a bit more stable and bug-free. Alas, it took over all file associations without asking during installation: not a sin, but not polite to be sure.

You can download videos from just about any site that uses the flash format.

As I said up front, selling a consumer-grade video converter is a tough row to hoe when there are capable freebies available. But Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate is easy, competent, and fast. There's a free demo (albeit one with watermarks) so give it a whirl—it might just suit your style.

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Juilliard, and now he power-mods his car for kicks.
More by Jon L. Jacobi

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Review: Ashampoo Photo Converter 2 handles most basic image editing functions

Expatriate Scotsman now living in Wurzburg, Germany, freelance writer, frustrated future bestselling author, obsessed bibliophile. Other interests include trying to understand The Architect in the Matrix movies, decrypting codes and ciphers, and trying to persuade my landlord and my wife to let me have a Highland Cow for a pet.
More by Mark O'Neill

If you work with images, you probably have a lot of editing tools on your computer which cover a wide range of functions. Going back and forth between these programs and loading and re-loading the same image takes up time and energy. So what if you could do away with all of those programs, and instead have all editing functions under one roof? That is what Ashampoo Photo Converter 2 ($15, 40-day free trial) tries to accomplish.

One thing to say up-front is that this is not Photoshop-grade software. Far from it. If you want to remove an unsightly spot on the end of someone's nose, then this is the wrong software for you. Instead Photo Converter 2 tries to cover all the basic nitty-gritty editing functions such as resizing, adding a watermark, rotating, flipping, changing the colors (brightness, contrast, etc) and converting to another image format.

You can perform these functions on either a single file or a batch of files, and specify whether you want the original unedited files deleted or kept. Ashampoo uses the tired cliché of "a Swiss Army Knife" to describe Photo Converter 2 and it does a pretty good job of matching up to that image. I just wish the phrase "Swiss Army Knife" would be permanently retired when it came to developers trying to describe their work.

When installing, the software will attempt to install a browser toolbar and change your homepage and default search engine. To avoid this, choose the custom installation option.  When installed, you also need to click configuration>Service Channel and uncheck "recommendations from the Ashampoo team". Otherwise, every time you close the software, you are going to get a nag screen trying to sell you something else.

Add your desired image or folder of images to begin the editing process.

One of the good things about aShampoo has to be the batch editing. For example, you can choose a folder full of images and once chosen, Ashampoo will load all of the images contained in that folder. From there, you can make one choice which will be instantly applied to all the images. This is especially great if you have holiday photos which need resized to the same height and width.

After spending some time trying out all of the different functions and putting it through its paces, I have found no problems with any of the functions. They all work fine and produce outstanding results.  The only thing I would complain about is that the preview window showing the image is very small, so when you are carefully tweaking animage, it is hard to see exactly if things are looking the way you want them to. Making the window a bit bigger would make this software a lot better.

Despite this little objection, if you are looking for a single piece of software which covers all of the basic editing functions and is fairly priced, and which offers the ability to batch process images, then give Ashampoo Photo Converter a try.

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate Review: Easy and Powerful, but Not Perfect

Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate ($66 direct, as of February 1, 2012) is a lot more than its name implies. Yes, it converts video, and it does so quickly and capably to a multitude of formats. But it also rips DVDs, records and downloads online video, and even edits and processes video with special effects. It's more a video toolbox than a simple converter.

Video Converter Ultimate handled every test video file I possess--including some rarer types such as Real Media and Ogg Theora. (With every other video converter I've tried, I've had to insert a "nearly" or some other qualifier in that statement.) The program provides handy conversion templates for a host of specific handheld devices, such as iPhones, iPads, Android phones, and even my HTC HD7, which runs Windows Phone 7--a mobile operating system that other packages often ignore. As with other programs of this ilk, you simply select the target playback device, and the software generates the appropriately sized output. It also supports outputting video optimized for social sites such as Facebook and YouTube, but the program doesn't facilitate uploading the video for you.

Editing in Video Converter Ultimate is surprisingly simple. It offers a basic trim editor, but it also provides a post-processor that allows you to add effects such as grayscale, negative, or an old-film look. If you wish, you can perform freehand crops, rotate, watermark the video, and add subtitling. Everything I edited and converted in Video Converter Ultimate worked perfectly: I encountered no missing key frames, redraw issues, or crashes. The program uses AMD, Nvidia, or Intel GPU acceleration if it's present.

Video Converter Ultimate will rip your DRM videos to nonprotected versions, but this feature works only if you have the original tokens for the video involved. It works via Windows Media Player's DRM support. It will also capture Web videos with audio from YouTube and the like, though it isn't as easy to use in that respect as browser plug-ins like Video DownloadHelper in Firefox.

Alas, in my tests Video Converter Ultimate took a misstep in the most unlikely of places--with the long-established technology of DVD. Wondershare understandably doesn't play it up, but the program rips protected DVDs. However, in my hands-on trials, DVD playback stuttered noticeably, and more unfortunately, so did converted output. Wondershare was unable to replicate this behavior, or provide a fix.

Wondershare is a powerful if slightly pricey video converter and light video editor, and it performs its core tasks very well. The DVD playback and ripping glitch is a puzzler, but that isn't part of the program's core functionality anyway--and according to the company, the feature should work.

--Jon L. Jacobi

Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate is an all-in-one DVD Video Converter, by providing you a one stop solution for family video/DVD conversion. You can convert both SD and HD videos to any video format for your portable media player or cell phone including iPod (Classic, Nano and Touch), iPhone, Apple TV, Zune, PSP, Pocket PC, Creative Zen, Archos, and 3GP mobile phones, etc. You can rip DVD to video in any format for enjoying them on your mobile devices on the go. You can also burn video to DVD and edit DVD from video for playback on your home DVD player. Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate is surprisingly easy and amusing for family media enjoyment, by allowing you to merge multiple files into one file, to clone a file, to clip one file into multiple segments, to trim the file length, to crop video, to adjust video effect, to edit either text or image watermark, to add subtitle, to set video and audio output settings, to capture images from video/DVD files, to customize DVD menu and so on.

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here