Via our contact form, we received an e-mail from Jim asking us for a recommendation on a free, easy to use video converter. Jim said he has several video files he would like to transfer to his iPod, but that they are in the wrong video format and he hates using iTunes. Can’t say we blame you there Jim ;-)

Well Jim, I’ve been using this piece of freeware for a while now and love the simplicity.  WinFF is a frontend GUI (graphical user interface) for the popular commandline video encoder known as FFmpeg

In other words, WinFF makes it very easy to convert your video files to DVD, AVI, WMV, VCD, Quicktime, cell phone format, etc.  Yes, you can convert your video files to MP4 as well for use on your iPod. A great thing about WinFF is that is supports batch jobs, so you can queue up all your files at once. Keep in mind though that depending on the size of your video files, they can take a while to convert.

You can also use it to convert your audio files to MP3, M4A, WMA, WAV, Ac3, etc.

It should also be mentioned however, that while WinFF is a great file converter, it will not transfer your converted files to your iPod. Since you dislike iTunes, you can use the free Winamp + the ml_ipod plugin to accomplish this task.

Download it here and give it a shot.

WinFF

Have other suggestions? Leave us a comment!