Free and Open Source Transcoding Software

First of all I would like to thank all of you for the great topic suggestions. I'll try to get to them in a timely manner.

To conclude a cursory review of the different Transcoding options, I will examine some of the most popular free or open source solutions available.

As with any free software or open source package, if there are any problems, you won’t have any body to complain to or to help you. Also, some free codec packs and encoding packages may contain spy ware. Definitely Caveat Emptor.
There are some very good video Transcoding tools available as open source or free. Probably the most popular open source software package is FFMPEG.

FFMPEG:
This is an open source video Transcoding platform that covers pretty much every video codec out there with the exception of On2’s VP6 Flash-8 codec.
There are many graphic user interfaces to FFMPEG’s command line interface. I have tried the SUPER package and found the UI intuitive and easy to use.

http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2006/07/31/dont-buy-any-video-converter-before-trying-this-freebie
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html
http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/

Riva FLV Encoder
Converts to Flash FLV 1.1 from many input formats including AVI, MPEG, DV, MOV and WMV.

http://www.download.com/Riva-FLV-Encoder/3000-2140_4-10320097.html?cdlPid=10381392

Windows Media Encoder
Converts to wmv files. It accepts many input video files as long as the codecs are installed in your system. Free from Microsoft. If your input file doesn’t work, you might need to install a codec pack.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoder/default.mspx

DivX Encoder
Converts to DivX format. The input support also depends on the codecs you have installed in your computer. You can get it free at the DivX website

http://www.divx.com/divx/windows/

TubeTilla YouTube downloader
Downloads a YouTube video from a URL and converts it to mp4 or wmv. A couple of people seem to have liked the software.

http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/gmm/fwvideconvert.html

Next week I will be talking about some of the best video transcoding practices for mastering and how to optimize that workflow.