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.
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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.

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