Techie-Gyan » photo

Convert media(video, audio, image) in different formats, for devices & phones

Aditya — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:46:43 +0000

Changing the format of media is required because different devices and different software platforms do not support all the formats and some times limitations are also based on the hardware like different devices where you get different screen sizes and different processors to render the media so it should be compatible with the device else will not give better response on viewing it or listening to it.

Many times you take pictures or videos using your camera and want to use them on different device e.g. if I want to rip the DVD and watch movie on my cell phone, I need to convert the DVD media into some format which is supported by my mobile and conversion should also take care of rest of the parameters so that video can be seen on phone in best possible quality.

Use of phone increased a lot and that makes it more required to have some tool which can convert among different media file formats easily. I am sure there are many such software tool which does the required thing which i tried to describe above but here i have one solution which I use and also quite happy with it.

FormatFactory is the software which can solve all the requirements for converting media from one format and specifications to other format and specifications. You can download this from www.pcfreetime.com and also find more details about it.

Here is a glimpse of all the features:

1. support converting all popular video,audio,picture formats to others (All to MP4/3GP/MPG/AVI/WMV/FLV/SWF, All to MP3/WMA/AMR/OGG/AAC/WAV, All to JPG/BMP/PNG/TIF/ICO/GIF/TGA, Rip DVD to video file , Rip Music CD to audio file, MP4 files support iPod/iPhone/PSP/BlackBerry format,
Supports RMVB,Watermark, AV Mux)
2. Repair damaged video and audio file.
3. Reducing Multimedia file size.
4. Support iphone,ipod multimedia file formats
5. Picture converting supports Zoom,Rotate/Flip,tags.
6. DVD Ripper.
7. Supports 50 languages

You can go through the help section after installing the software, in case you find any difficulty in usage.

it has a separate option for converting media (audio/video) for mobile devices which contains wide range of brands and their devices (having predefined requirements of format and other specifications) which made the conversion really easy as you do not need to learn all about media format support of your device.

Go to options for changing different settings like the output folder of converted media, after conversion actions and more media format related options.

Note: You can also use format factory from command shell. How? Go through the help section from Help menu.

Images, sound and video clips – Wikimedia Commons

Aditya — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:43:00 +0000

As you know about the wikipedia which is open source encyclopedia, Wikimedia Commons is the repository for images, sound and video clips which is also free to use. You need not to pay if you want to use or change the image/sound media file for use.

Everyone is allowed to copy, use and modify any files here freely as long as the source and the authors are credited and as long as users release their copies/improvements under the same freedom to others. The Wikimedia Commons database itself and the texts in it are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

Here are some examples how you can make use of it. If you need a picture of Golden Gate for using it on your website.

If you need an icon for representing user in your destop software or website:

Just search the required resource from this website and use it.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Rollip.com — Create Polaroids from your photos

Aditya — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:54:42 +0000

Polaroid pictures are more interesting in their look and the best part of these pics that you can add text to it, that makes it more cool. We can create Polaroid look for our pictures but it requires some amount of expertise on image editors using which we can make it happen. You can Google it and find various tutorials of photoshop to create Polaroid of your picture.

I still remember when I took hours to create a digital collage using my college pictures and also took help of one of my friend (a Graphic designer) in it.

I came across this website which does the same thing real quick and in few simple steps. Visit www.rollip.com for trying it yourself. It gives your original picture a classic look and you can choose the effect you want while converting your picture into a Polaroid one. For the complete set of steps which any one need to follow can be found at http://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Polaroid-Using-Rollip.Com

I am not writing much as the steps are really simple and any one can experience it really quick. Usage is really simple and results are really cool. I suggest this for collage pictures for sure. I am very soon gonna make my own collage at home using this website

See What I created there http://www.rollip.com/share/0936-8bc1bc8c-9ca6-11de-9cef-0030485ac562

Google Similar Images

Aditya — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 15:05:32 +0000

I think quite a useful feature in searching images specially.

Check it out at http://similar-images.googlelabs.com/

Edit pictures online (Another one)- fotoflexer.com

Aditya — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:03:27 +0000

I love online tools. Tools which are really useful and can be used by masses for their daily need. I have been doing number of posts on online image editing in past:

1. Edit pictures online – www.picnik.com
2. Optimize images for web – Image optimization/format conversion
3. Resize your photos/pictures Online – www.webresizer.com
4. Adobe Photoshop Express – Beta

This one is close to www.picnik.com in functionality and features or probably more evolved. The website is based on Flash technology which lts you edit your pictures in many ways:

a. Basic Fixing like Resize, Crop, Red-eye, Rotate, Flip etc.
b. Effects like Invert, Gray scale, Painting , Bronze etc.
c. Decorate like Text, stickers, draw, erase etc.
d. And some are advanced like Layers, distort, Beautify and Animations.

You can also pick your picture from one of the picture sharing networks like photobucket, facebook, myspace, picasa, flickr etc. These types of integration makes it more useful as people generally keep their pictures on such networks.

This application has also been selected as one of the 10 Best Application UIs in 2008 by http://www.useit.com/alertbox

Happy editing!!