Best video converter recommendations?

Hey there!
I’m looking for a bit of guidance regarding some file conversions I've been wrestling with using Any Video Converter 5. I have this .avi movie file paired with an .srt subtitle file, and I'm trying to convert the whole thing into a .wmv format because my TV just won't cooperate with subtitles otherwise. The real headache, though, is that no matter how much I tinker with the subtitle settings, I can't seem to get the special characters to display correctly—everything just turns into gibberish. Does anyone know a fix for this?

When you say LCD, I assume you’re talking about a TV. Which manufacturer and specific model are we looking at, and what device are you using to watch it?

lcd - General Electric, I usually stream everything through a media stick, but I’ve run into this persistent headache whenever I try to be proactive and run files through a video converter. Every single time I attempt to convert a movie, the subtitles come out looking like complete gibberish—instead of standard American characters, I'm staring at a mess of digital hieroglyphics because the special accented letters just don't translate correctly.

Has anyone actually attempted using Adobe yet? I suppose it generally doesn't function correctly on television sets—since it was primarily designed for DVD or DivX players—but I recall reading somewhere that someone managed to get it working on a General Electric unit.

Robert Vaughn22 said:I've got a General Electric LCD, and I usually stream movies via a streaming stick. The headache starts when I try to use Any Video Converter to convert files; every single time, the subtitles come out broken. Instead of standard American characters, I just get a bunch of weird hieroglyphics where the accented letters should be.

http://www.any-video-converter.com/a...tput-video.php

Go to Edit > Options > Subtitles and set it up like this:

http://i50.tinypic.com/zk6f60.jpg

It just won't work. I tried using those Slavic or Central European settings first, but honestly, it’s always the same result regardless of which subtitle configuration I throw at it.

It’s possible the issue is just the subtitle file itself... though it might be how your TV is configured. If you can't find a way to fix the settings, honestly, the easiest workaround is to just swap out all those weird characters that aren't displaying right. You know, like replacing "Š" with "S" or "Č" with "C."

Fire up Subtitle Workshop, load your translation, and look at the top left corner. Select FIND (it's the third option down), then hit FIND & REPLACE from the dropdown menu to pull up the little dialog box. http://www.zaslike.com/files/h8bzbmdba2ger4nynpl3.jpg
Put the problematic letter in the first line and its standard version in the second, then hit "replace all." Just repeat that process for every wonky character until it's clean, then save the whole thing as an SRT file.

I did give that a thought once, though I eventually decided against it. I actually tried my hand at using AVS Video Converter, and while the software itself performs quite adequately, the free version is an absolute nuisance. It insists on slapping a "created with non-activated version" watermark right in the center of my screen every ten minutes or so, which is enough to drive anyone to madness if they're just trying to get some work done.

Robert Vaughn22 said:It won't work. I tried setting it to Germanic/Western European Languages first, but it's always the same result regardless of which subtitle settings I throw at it.

I set it to "Germanic/Western European Languages (ISO-8859-2)," and after converting everything to .wmv, the subtitles actually work fine on my PC.