Only The Best

Here we’ve got one impressive little program. There is almost no format this sucker can’t handle. It’s got the standards, AVI, MPEG, ASF, MOV, VOB. Then it’s got some less than standard 3gp (Nokia cell phone video), animated GIF, SWF and FLV. Even I-Tunes, Zune, DS, PSP and PS3. That’s still not a complete list. These are the available containers as it calls it. For example, while a file may be an AVI, it could be encoded with DivX, XVid, or other codecs.

The Output codec drop-down will update accordingly to reflect the available options for the selected container format. Keep in mind that not all combinations will be successful for various reasons that are beyond the scope of this article. The image to the left is the list of codecs when selecting the AVI container on my computer.

Once you’ve chosen a video codec, it’s time to choose an audio codec. This is not necessary, and in fact not possible, when selecting a format that has no audio such as GIF. Likewise, if choosing an audio only container such as WAV, MP3, OGG, etc, you cannot select a video codec.

Video Options

Once you’ve settled on the codecs, move on to setting the video options.

First you have the option for Stream Copy. This would be useful if you were only changing the audio. Choosing this option will not re-encode the video. Next the Video Scale Size can be set. This determines the width and height of the output. Typically you would select No Change unless you are resizing the video. Selecting the More checkbox will allow you to enter custom dimensions. Keep in mind that some formats have restrictions on what dimensions can be used.

When choosing No Change for the scale, Aspect will default to the same. It is also set automatically based on the scale size. In either case the Aspect can be overridden, however this should be left at the default value unless you know what you are doing.

Setting the Frames / Sec can sometimes be a case of trial and error. Unless there is a reason to, you should typically try to match this value to the frames/sec of the original video or the audio could end up out of synch with the video. As with the size, checking More will allow setting of a custom frame rate.

The Bitrate kbps can be trial and error as well to achieve the file size you want. A wide range of options are available with no real guide as to what kind of quality the values represent. Typically I would recommend first selecting a value close to that of the original video and encoding a small portion, say 30 seconds. Once you’ve got 30 seconds worth of converted video, you can estimate the total file size based on the length of the input video. From there you can adjust the bitrate. The lower you go the lower the quality so you may have to compromise between quality and size to get what you want.

The Options block has a number of settings. Hi Quality is self explanatory. Enabling this will produce a higher quality conversion at the expense of time. Top Quality I imagine is higher than high. It has not become enabled during any of my use. Stretch It is another option I have yet to see enabled. 44K Audio will encode the audio at CD quality. H264 Profile is another disabled option for my uses so far, along with Crop / Pad. Selecting Options from this section will open a side window presenting the ability to set interlacing options. You are also able to specify to encode only a portion of the video as well as several GOP options and encoding volume adjustment.

Audio Options

The audio options are not as abundant as the video, but do just as well.

Stream Copy we’ve already covered. The same principle applies only for audio this time. Disable Audio is also self explanatory and automatically selected for containers that do not support audio.

The Sampling Freq has the standard options running from 11khz-48khz. Channels allows you to select Mono (1) or Stereo (2). When choosing the audio Bitrate kbps, 128 is usually an acceptable value for preserving the quality. Keep in mind that selecting a value that is higher than the original is almost certainly a waste of disk space.

The last option, DVD Language Select Track #, I have never changed from default. This would be used if your source was a VOB or a format containing multiple audio streams. In this case default would be the first track I imagine.

Other Points

One thing to note, is that you will likely want to change the output folder. To get to this option, right click in the source file area and choose Output File Saving Management.

Files can be dropped right onto the source pane or by pressing Control-A.

We’re not finished yet

In addition to all of the features mentioned so far, SUPER goes one step further and adds the ability to use a video stream as the source. Supported protocols are http, mms, and rtsp.

The options might change a bit depending on the combination of containers and codecs selected so play around with it to uncover the full potential.

Pro’s

• Supports most popular and lesser popular formats
• Extremely configurable. Every aspect of the conversion options are well laid out and displayed [almost] all at once.
• Supports ffmpeg and MEncoder
• Supports using DirectShow
• I have yet to encounter a file I was unable to convert with SUPER
• As their tag-line says, SUPER © does for FREE what other encoders CAN’T do for money.

Con’s

• Not huge but not tiny. Installs to 26 Megs
• The main window likes to be in the center of the screen. If it is moved, selecting options will often cause it to snap back to the center. This has been occurring for multiple versions.

All in all, unless you need to perform editing, you might as well remove all of your other converters and just go with SUPER. It really does it all, and it does it well.

• Download Page (Scroll all the way down for link)

Filed under: Audio / Video