If you’ve ever wanted to convert an article to an ebook for later reading, it’s usually a two or three step process. DotEPUB is a Chrome extension that handles the conversion in one simple click. More »
Windows: Planes, trains and automobiles—a long trip in any of them calls for some portable video. Any Video Converter, a longstanding favourite Lifehacker tool, is still being updated and working strong, recently adding 1080p YouTube videos to its repertoire. More »
Windows only: If you need frequent access to word definitions and text translation, Lingoes is a portable application that does everything from dictionary word look-ups to translation of over 80 languages. More »
Linux only: Video downloading utility UTube Ripper saves a copy of your favourite YouTube videos for your offline viewing pleasure, even converting them into a non-flash format. More »
Windows only: We’ve covered a variety of tools for converting PDF files, but if you need to bulk convert a pile of them Zilla PDF to TXT Converter gets the job done quickly. More »
Windows only: If you’re looking for a fire-and-forget video converter to help stock your iPod, iPodME is a dead simple and lightweight tool for bulk converting your video files. iPodME is a completely portable standalone application—a GUI wrapper of the venerable ffmpeg for the curious among you. Operation is as simple as running the application, dragging and dropping a list of video files you want to convert onto it, and adjusting the basic video settings. You can select the video dimensions and the quality using the plain English metric provided–slow, quality or turbo, size for instance—to determine the conversion speed. If you dig into the options menu you can also tweak the process priority. The default for the application is to take advantage of idle cycles and back off when you’re actually attempting to do work. Using the fast, quality setting and leaving it on the default of idle, it took approximately one hour to convert 20 episodes of Fraggle Rock into iPod-compatible MP4 files. An unexpected bonus in such a small package is support for SRT subtitle files, if you have them for your favourite foreign media you can embed them as you convert. If you’d like more fine tuned control over your video conversions, check out the candidates in the Hive Five Best Media Converters and the Top 10 Free Video Rippers, Encoders, and Converters to fulfil your tweaking needs. iPodME [via Freeware Genius]
If you have a bunch of older Office documents to convert to the Office 2007 format and you want to do it quickly, tech blog Digital Inspiration offers an excellent tutorial on getting it done. No need to open and convert each individual file—instead, you can convert entire directories in bulk.
Windows only: Free application Xrecode converts your audio files from popular formats to any of the same formats. While it may not have the complexity and advanced features of previously mentioned MediaEncoder Audio Edition, it’s also less complicated to use—just drag files you want to convert into Xrecode, choose the output format, and get started. Xrecode also sets itself apart with smart options for splitting audio by CUE files or by silence—perfect for quickly splitting large audio files, like your vinyl-to-MP3 conversion. Xrecode is freeware, Windows only.
Xrecode [via FreewareGenius]
