Play And Convert Any Multimedia File

In this post I will list some problems many people have with multimedia formats and one solution. But let's start with the problems:

* I have a video file and I want to extract the audio part.
* I have an AVI video and I want to put it on my web page in a format optimized for the web.
* How can I transfer videos from my PC to my mobile phone that supports only 3gp format?
* I have an AVI/MOV/ MP4/WMV file and I want to convert it to AVI/MOV/ MP4/WMV.
* How can I save on my disk MMS and RTSP streams?
* Ok, I downloaded a file from YouTube as a flv file, but how can I encode it in a format that can be viewed in any player?
* I got a file in a strange format: 3gp/amr/mp4/ogg/mpc. Does anyone know how can I view it?

There's only one answer to these frustrations and many others: SUPER.

SUPER is a free program that lets you view and convert almost any multimedia format you've ever heard. And you don't have to have any fancy codecs or player, because SUPER includes MPlayer, the best Unix media player, and a lot of codecs, including FFDShow.

Let's see how easy is to save a YouTube video as an AVI file.

Step 1. Go to a video.
Step 2. Select the URL value from the "About this video" box in the right.
Step 3. Paste the value at keepvid.com and save the file as a flv video.
Step 4. Drag and drop the file to SUPER and select the AVI container. Press Encode button.

Although SUPER has a very basic interface, it's very powerful. You just select the format of the output file, drag-and-drop the input file and click Encode. Using the same simple steps, you can convert a MOV file to MP3, an AVI to a 3gp file, an MP3 to a Flash file or any video to a format supported by iPod, PSP or PocketPC. Or you can just play a file in one of these formats.

The package at a glance:
* contains ffmpeg, mencoder, mplayer, ffmpeg2theora
* supported formats: 3gp (Nokia, Siemens, Sony, Ericson) asf, avi (DivX, Xvid, MPEG4, MSmpeg4), fli, flc, flv (used in Flash), mpg (Mpeg I or Mpeg II), mov, mp4, ogg, qt, rm, str (Play Station), swf (Flash), viv, vob, wmv, ac3, amr, mp2, mp3, mp4, ogg, ra, wma
* download size: 25 MB
* freeware

Update. It's pretty hard to find the download links on SUPER's site, so here's a tip: download the software from third-party sites like AfterDawn or Softpedia.

Partition Your Hard Drive Without Partition Magic

If you want to resize your partitions, create a new partition to install another operating system without losing your data, you need a powerful disk partitioning utility like Partition Magic. If you don't want to pay for a commercial application, you can use QtParted, an open-source utility that comes with Knoppix.

Ok, but what is Knoppix? Knoppix is a Linux live CD based on Debian distribution. That means you don't have to install it on your system, you just burn it on a CD and boot from the CD.

After Knoppix boots (type knoppix at the boot prompt), start at the large letter K at bottom left. Select K | System | QTParted to launch the utility. The main window is split into left and right panes. The left lists any hard drives that QTParted detects. Click the drive you want to edit, and QTParted will scan it for partition information, displaying the details in the right pane.

You can resize the partitions (choose Resize options), create a new partition. The tool will write the changes to the drive only after you select File | Commit. After QTParted finished repartitioning your hard drive, click on the K menu, and select restart. Remove your Knoppix CD and that's all.

QtParted supports FAT32, NTFS, HFS, ext2, ext3 file systems.

You can download Knoppix from one of these mirrors.

Related:
Burn a Windows Live CD
System Recovery CD
How to reset Windows password

The Most Powerful Windows Application

Digg This!

How much would you pay for an application that can do:

* file-manager inspired by Norton Commander, but with a modern Windows interface
* has two panes for easy file management
* every pane can have as many tabs as you want
* advanced file search with regular expressions
* rename multiple files
* split files (useful if you want to send a large file by email)
* pack/unpack files in ZIP format
* compare directories
* synchronize directories
* FTP client with support for SFTP
* document viewer that supports: text files, source code files (Assembler, C++, CSS, Delphi, FoxPro, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, SQL, XML), HTML, RTF, Word documents, Excel sheets, OpenOffice documents, executable files, DLL, INI files, registry files, image files (PNG, JPG, GIF, Paint Shop Pro, BMP, PSD, ICO, CUR, ANI, MAC, WMF, EMF, PIC), Flash, media files (MP3, WMA, OGG, AVI), database files (FoxPro, dBase, Paradox, Access, MySQL, CSV), archives (RAR, ZIP, TAR, GZ, 7zip, bzip2), disk image files (ISO, BIN, IMG, NRG)
* AES encryptor (encrypt/decrypt files with 128bit key using password or keyfile)
* decompilation of 32-bit PE executables (EXE SCR) and libraries (DLL OCX CPL BPL), resource files (RES DCR)
* create a list file with all selected files and directories
* count the size of all files in a directory
* shows informations about solar and moon dates, celebrations and calendars
* synchronize your local computer with atomic time via Internet
* browse NT events and services faster
* view/edit/kill processes that are running currently on the system
* RSS Reader
* CD/DVD burning
* view and edit files on ext2 partitions (useful to manage files on Linux partitions from Windows)
* mount disk images as additional virtual drives in system
* much more...

You can pay $34 or you can use it for free, if you don't mind clicking on a button everytime the application starts. Total Commander PowerPack is the most powerful Windows utility you can get for free. And the setup has less than 15MB.

Just compare this list of characteristics with the features of any other application and you will get the most feature-rich and the most powerful Windows application.

EBCD: System Recovery Boot CD

EBCD is a valuable boot CD, intended for system recovery in the case of software or hardware faults. Using EBCD, you can:

* recover deleted file, even file re-deleted from Windows Recycle Bin

* wipe single file or a whole disk so that it will be impossible to recover it in any way

* recover data from accidently formatted disk

* recover master boot record of HDD

The CD includes: DOS v7.10, Volkov Commander, FDisk, SCSI disk support, NTFSDOS read-only version, NT password recovery, NU DiskEdit, NU Unerase, NU Unformat.

Download ebcd-0_6_1-pro-sfx.exe [EBCD 0.6.1, 17 MB, alternate locations], run it, select a folder for installation, go to the folder and run makeebcd.exe. You will have a 60.4 MB ISO you can burn on a CD.

Note: The CD hasn't been updated since 2004 at the software's homepage and the download location you can find above is one of the few still available.

Related:
TestDisk: Recover lost partitions
Burn a Windows Live CD
System Rescue Live CD

Webaroo - Search the Web Offline

Acer will begin selling laptops preloaded with 40 gigabytes of data, representing a snapshot of the Web. This collection of web pages was gathered by Webaroo, a company that develops a free software that lets you search and browse web pages offline. Webaroo servers crawl the web, analyze web pages and select the web pages that have the most content value in the least storage size and packages them into a "Web Pack". These packages can be updated with the latest content when the user goes online.

"People are addicted to search," said Brad Husick, Webaroo's president, and "there are lots of times when Internet access is inconvenient."

You can download Webaroo 1.0 Beta [4.7 MB, Windows 2000/XP, requires .NET Framework 1.1] to have great content about a certain topic in an easy-to-digest manner. For now, there are just a few "web packs" for: world news, football, Chicago, Tokio, Paris and you can also download a website recursively.

Related:
Wikipedia on your iPod

FlashGet - Best Download Manager For Windows

FlashGet is a feature-rich download manager with a nice interface and powerful features. Why would you need a download manager when you can download files with your browser? If you use Internet Explorer and your connection drops, you lost your file. If you want to download big files, FlashGet is a lot faster and can shut down your PC when finished downloading. Another advantage of a download manager is that it forces you to organize your downloads.

FlashGet features:

* clipboard monitoring, browser monitoring (Explorer, Firefox, Opera) - you just click or copy the download link you want and FlashGet will get it for you

* split files into sections or splits, and download each split simultaneously

* supports RTSP and MMS protocols

* it displays only an ad on top of the window (similar to the ad-supported Opera)

* a very nice Site Explorer utility that lets you explore HTTP and FTP sites. You can crawl Google site, starting from the index and flolowing all the links recursively.

* you can create rules for download management: for example, all mp3 files should go into a specific folder

Download from Softpedia (FlashGet's homepage has slow mirrors for download)

Update: FlashGet is now free and it doesn't have ads.

Spring Cleaning: Windows Optimization Toolkit

All the programs below are free, small, easy to use and very powerful. They'll help you make the spring cleaning for your PC.

PageDefrag (Sysinternals) - defragments registry, event log files, Windows 2000/XP hibernation files.

NT Registry Optimizer - defragments registry files, by recreating each registry hive "from scratch", removing any slack space that may be left from previously modified or deleted keys.

Power Defragmenter GUI - GUI application for Contig (Sysinternals). It's perfect for quickly optimizing files that are continuously becoming fragmented, or that you want to ensure are in as few fragments as possible.

CrapCleaner - cleans Temporary files, URL history, cookies, autocomplete form history from IE, Firefox, Opera. Also cleans registry, temporary files from Windows and other third-party applications (eMule, Kazaa, Google Toolbar, Netscape, MS Office, Nero, etc).

FreeRAM XP Pro - read more about the freeware in this article.

Also read interesting tips about pagefile optimization.

Freeware collection: SmartFTP - FTP client

SmartFTP is my favourite FTP client. It's free for personal use, has a very nice Explorer-like interface (now with tabs), you can use drag and drop, secure connections (TLS and SSL). SmartFTP also offers support for Unicode/UTF8/MBCS, IPv6, and UPnP. Multiple FTP connections can be opened at the same time, and you can copy files from one remote host to another (FXP). Remote-host directory information is cached for future viewing, and FTP URLs are supported.

Pretty impressive for just 2.3 MB. This is arguably the most developed FTP client. You can even download a native x64 version.

SmartFTP homepage

Great freeware: FreeRAM XP Pro memory manager

FreeRAM XP Pro frees and optimizes your computer's RAM (Random Access Memory). Often, other applications may hog or incorrectly use RAM, which decreases your computer's performance. FreeRAM XP Pro frees this RAM so your computer can run faster and more smoothly. The need to reboot is also less frequent.

How does it work? FreeRAM XP clears junk out of RAM and flushes less-often used items to the swap file. There they do not take up any RAM, and are reloaded from the swap file on a need-to-use basis.

FreeRAM XP Pro's AutoFree feature enables it to clear out no longer useful data from RAM without affecting RAM still used by programs and applications.

FreeRAM XP Pro is, of course, freeware, has only 600 KB, and got 5/5 rating on Download.com:

Looking to free up some RAM on your running system? Then FreeRAM XP Pro is the program for you. Truly freeware, it gives you complete access to all its features at no cost. You can either have the program automatically optimize your system, or you can specify how much memory you'd like to free up. Advanced tray support, automatic memory monitoring and optimization, system-metric monitors, and real-time memory information are just a few of the features that make this program attractive and useful. You also can apply different sounds to different actions. It's doubtful you'll find a memory optimizer easier to use than FreeRAM XP, making it a smart pick for anyone who's ever been frustrated by a poky PC.

Download from Download.com

Gaim 2.0: multi-protocol instant messenger

Gaim is a multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM and ICQ (Oscar protocol), MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber (for example, Google Talk), Gadu-Gadu, SILC, GroupWise Messenger, and Zephyr networks.

Gaim users can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AOL Instant Messenger, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time.

Gaim supports many features of the various networks, such as file transfer, away messages, typing notification, and MSN window closing notification. It also goes beyond that and provides many unique features. A few popular features are Buddy Pounces, which give the ability to notify you, send a message, play a sound, or run a program when a specific buddy goes away, signs online, or returns from idle; and plugins, consisting of text replacement, a buddy ticker, extended message notification, iconify on away, spell checking, tabbed conversations, and more.


Gaim runs on a number of platforms, including Windows, Linux, and Qtopia (Sharp Zaurus and iPaq).

The last release of Gaim is Gaim 2.0 Beta 2 (Windows download).

For other platforms, download Gaim from here.

To configure Google Talk to work with Gaim, check this guide.