Best video conversion software?

To whom it may concern,

I'm looking for some technical guidance regarding the optimal video container. Specifically, I want to find that "sweet spot"—the format that offers the highest possible fidelity for both video and audio while taking up the absolute minimum amount of hard drive space. Is .mkv generally superior to .mp4 in this regard? My goal is to take my existing movie collection—which is mostly sitting in outdated .avi files—and compress them down to a more manageable size without turning them into pixelated messes. Also, does anyone have a recommendation for a straightforward conversion tool? Ideally, something that won't break the bank—free software would be preferred.

Thanks in advance!

Look, Adobe is pretty straightforward and it’s free—can't beat that—plus it uses the MKV container, which honestly offers way better support for different audio and video formats than MP4 does. You could just stick with the Xvid codec for encoding; let's be real, that AVI file you're messing with probably isn't some high-definition masterpiece anyway—though H.264 definitely handles compression better if you care about file size. Just run both through a quick test on a sample file and see which one you actually prefer.

driftingbear13 said:Hi everyone,

I was wondering what the best video format is—specifically one that takes up the least amount of hard drive space while still keeping the video and audio quality as high as possible. Is it better to go with .mkv or .mp4? Basically, I have this whole collection of movies mostly in .avi format that I’d love to shrink down to a smaller file size. Also, does anyone know of a really simple program for converting them that might be free to use?

Thanks in advance!!!

There isn't actually a huge difference there, because you can't take a file that's 700 MB in something like Netflix and expect to find a format that keeps that exact same quality but cuts the file size down to 350 MB. That just isn't physically possible, no matter which video format you decide to go with.

I personally use Handbrake and it does the job just fine when it comes to converting files.