Want to rip a driving sequence from Fast and Furious? Want a specific song from a movie but donít want to buy the whole album? MP3 player doesnít recognize the format of your favorite songs? Need to upload in GIF format instead of the JPEGs your digital camera uses?

These are scenarios and questions youíre familiar with. The biggest question in the end, however, is–’What do you do?’

The simplest answer to that is finding a ripper, encoder or converter. They can turn those frustrating scenarios into simple tasks. To start you off, hereís a detailed catalogue of the best tools out there.

Most of these rippers, encoders and converters are freeware so you don’t have to shell out a single cent. They’re effective, efficient and can ease your digital lives tremendously.

So ‘what do you do’?–All you need to do is choose!

These tools are very useful in extracting audio from various sources, performing conversions from one format to another, and also in compressing or decompressing an audio file in order to improve its quality.

Get an excellent software tool for ripping audio CDs with Audiograbber. Unlike other audio recorders, it copies the digital sound hence giving better quality output as compared to the one recorded from a sound card. Delete silent sequences and remove noise. Then save it using one of many audio encoders available.

Cdex is an open source Digital Audio CD Ripper and Extractor. It can extract audio tracks directly from an audio CD and can compress and store it in a number of formats. With features like multiple track recording, support for CD Text, and advanced noise correction, it can easily solve your most common problems. Supports all releases of Windows from 95 to Vista.

A powerful audio ripping software which can rip audio CDs into several formats like WMA, MP3, OGG, VQF, FLAC, APE and WAV. It supports automatic volume adjustment and has several other interesting features.

The DVD Audio Ripper can rip audio from DVDs into a number of audio formats along with sound effects. It works faster than other tools by reducing the conversion process to one step and also improving the conversion speed up to 400%.

This tool facilitates you with conversion of your audio CD collection to audio files on your hard disk. Its features include fast direct conversion with error correction, multiple data rates support, audio tag editing, and an audio player with play list editor and a user friendly interface.

SurCode for Dolby Digital Encoder is an excellent encoder which helps you reduce the space occupied on a DVD by audio track. By encoding the audio track it frees the space previously taken by it and hence allows for a longer running time or, higher bit rate video for better image quality.

LAME is a high quality audio encoder. It is one of the best available encoders due to it’s support for MP3 encoder at mid-high bitrates and at VBR. It’s an ongoing project with improvements being made to quality and speed.

Another free general purpose audio/video encoder and converter with capabilities of batch conversion. Its simple interface can be used in mobile devices like PSP, iPhone, iPod etc.

PowerEnc is a simple and easy to use CD ripper and encoder. Its fast performance allows you to switch between different audio formats with ease and speed. Different free versions are available to choose from. Media Coder is extremely handy if you need to extract audio tracks from video files and repair audio and video CD/DVDs. The best feature: it can repair corrupted and partially downloaded files.

AIMP Classic is a freeware audio player. It shares the look of winamp so it’s very easy to get used to it. But what makes it worth having, are the additional functionalities of Audio Recording, Audio files Format Conversion and the option to edit and review tags.

AoA Audio Extractor is a valuable tool to extract audio tracks from almost all video formats including AVI, MPEG, MPG, FLV, DAT, WMV, MOV, MP4 and 3GP. Save files in MP3, WAV and AC3 formats. Users can also change the Bit rates, sample rate, and channels according to their choice. A must-have for novices as well as experts.

Looking for an all in one toolkit for handling audio files? Audiograil supports MP3, OGG, MPC, APE, AAC, FLAC and WAV formats. Features include: albums renaming and tag editing, burning of audio files to audio CDs, file organizing and duplicate file finding, Playlist creation and audio quality analyzing. A must have for new geeks.

A free audio recorder and editor. Audacity is a multiple platform supportive (Windows, Mac, Linux & GNU) tool with capabilities including recording live audio, editing several sound formats (Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV & AIFF), conversion of records as well as tapes into digital audio, dubbing, importing & exporting sound and audio effects.

dBpoweramp is a collection of different audio applications excelling in different areas of audio capturing, altering and producing. The applications include CD Ripping, Audio Conversion, Asset UPnP (DLNA compatible), CD Burning and Batch Ripping.

GoldWave is a professional digital audio editor with a trial version available free of cost. It can perform different operations on audio files like playing, editing, mixing and analyzing. It can apply special effects, reduce noise, and remaster old recordings.

A free and easy to use tool. This application lets you rip audio CDs into a number of formats like MP3, WAV, Ogg and WMA. It can edit file tags and can also record audio.

FreeRIP is another free software which facilitates you with extracting audio tracks from audio CDs and then later save them in different formats. In addition, it provides a high quality and lossless audio compression technique and also a Tag Editor.

Xrecord is the most useful audio converter, extractor and splitter, capable of doing parallel conversions. It can convert audio files from almost any audio format, and can extract audio from video files as well. Available in several major languages.

Another multi-functional, all-in-one audio tool with three different roles including “Audio CD Ripper”, “Audio Converter” and “CD/DVD Creator”. With this tool you can rip audio CDs, convert their formats and then write them to your own CD/DVDs. Simple and easy.

SurCode for Dolby Digital Encoder is an excellent encoder which helps you reduce the space occupied on a DVD by audio track. By encoding the audio track it frees the space previously taken by it and hence allows for a longer running time or, higher bit rate video for better image quality.

With various freely available tools, it’s not hard to download a streaming video, extract sound from the video or convert videos from one format to another. Some of the most popular video encoders, rippers and converters are:

StreamRipper an Open Source (GPL) application that lets you record streaming mp3 to your hard drive. It comes with support for Unicode and character set transcoding and hence support many file formats.

This is a simple DVD Ripper tool. It is capable of copying the entire DVD movie to hard disk and can remove all protection restrictions (CSS, RC, RCE, APS, UOPs and Sony ARccOS) while copying. Also comes with support for full HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats.

This tool provides users with an easy and efficient way to back up their favorite DVDs without the worries of scratches which can render them useless. You can easily convert DVDs to almost any video format out there.

It tool is a multilingual supportive software capable of doing several video related tasks. As to it’s main features, it can convert video between the most common video formats in minimum time, create movie DVDs, manage videos from HD-cameras, output the videos to many devices, make videos web ready, and extract soundtracks and images from movies. It also lets you edit fast and precisely with a timeline, and even supports batch mode.

Avidemux is a video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It supports several formats and provides many video filters that can resize, deinterlace, IVTC, sharpen and denoise.

It is powerful MPEG converter software which can easily interconvert several video formats. It comes with several video editing tools including cropping, adjustment of artistic effects; adding watermark of text overlay and picture. Also the effect-added video can be viewed next to the original one.

An easy to use tool which can be used as video maker and converter. Xilisoft converts videos from all of the popular video formats into other Video and Audio formats. Create videos from pictures and add different features like clipping, cropping and adjusting effects, adding subtitles and watermark to videos.

This tool allows users to publish their videos to the Web. It supports “FLV” and “SWF” formats and allows exporting videos to PowerPoint as well. Users can include a wide range of Visual Effects to their videos along Titles and Subtitles. Watermarks and Logos are also allowed.

This encoder converts files from Adobe Flash formats (SWF and FLV) to any video format. Flash games can also be recorded with this tool. Flash formats can be converts to MP4 media to be used in mobile phones which don’t have Flash support.

Any Video Converter is a software tool which covers almost all video formats conversions. It can convert any video format to other. The features include fast conversion of compressed file types and batch conversion with capability of converting thousands of files simultaneously.

Blaze Media Pro is an all-in-one tool for conversion, editing and burning both Video and Audio formats. It allows conversion of bit rate and compression. Video can be captured from most TV tuners, web cams, and other video capture devices. Blaze Media Pro offers an integrated media player, MP3 player, video player and CD ripper/player etc.

Super is a simple and efficient tool which can play and convert any video format. With one simple click users can convert between several video formats including 3GP, PSP, DVD, VCD, AVI, FLV, GIF and countless others.

This tool is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX and can accept practically any format as a source and convert it into one of several other video formats—including those that are compatible with your iPod.

Wise Video is a very helpful video download tool to help the users to download videos from Websites like YouTube, Google and Metacafe etc. Users can download several files simultaneously and can convert them to formats like 3GP, iPod, MP3, AVI and DVD/VCD/SVCD etc.

VideoGet helps users to simply download YouTube videos and from more than 750 other video websites. It provides the option to save files not only in FLV format but also in many others like AVI, MPEG1, MPEG2, WMV, FLV, MP4, 3GP and MP3. With VideoGet user can pause / resume download process and can also resume broken download.

Replay Media Catcher is an easy yet powerful tool. It can capture any streaming media and save it to your PC where you can then watch it or convert it for viewing on a mobile device. It can even automatically names and tags your video and MP3 files.

Another free tool which converts many video file types. It takes most of the Video formats as source like AVI, DIVX, XVID, FLV, x264, VOB, MPEG and DVDs and converts them into the proper video formats that play on your video playing device.

Koyote Free Video Converter is comprehensive software to convert your videos under various formats. This tool allows you to set the start time, end time or duration of the video sequence you want to extract. Its conversion speed is a definite plus.

Avi2Dvd is an all in one software which is capable of converting several video formats into to DVD, SVCD, VCD. The tool supports multiple audio streams and up to three textual external subtitles. It also facilitates users to produce dvd menus with chapters, audio and subtitles.

These image editors not only let you add effects, crop, resize, rotate or flip the images, but can also save the images in formats other than their default format. Some of the best available tools are:

ImageTasks is a free, but great tool for editing, adjusting and converting images. It can also generate HTML albums which can be directly published to Web. It supports 15+ graphic formats and has about 12 graphic filters. ImageTask also implements batch edit.

FastStone is an efficient and easy to use utility which can be used to edit images. It comes with several features like image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping and color adjustments. It supports all major graphic formats and can convert files from one format to another.

Here’s another powerful and simple photo editing software. You can review and edit multiple photos simultaneously. It comes with several effect filters and a GIF editor.

Here’s a command line based software suite to help you create, edit and compose bitmap images. It comes with several interesting features like special effects, animation, image identification, motion picture support and image calculator.

Magic Tracer is another raster to vector converter. It works as an all purpose tool in conversion from raster to vector. It has a simple interface and real-time previews

A fine software tool for converting graphic formats. Graphic converter supports more than 25 formats and has 50 different filters to apply on images. Another cool feature is its unlimited undo and redo support.

With this professional converter, you can work with a large range of items like graphic files, photos, drafts, finance documents and other images of any type. Image Converter Plus comes with multiple image conversion and resizing capabilities and Accepts and converts a wide range of file formats.

This is a command line tool and is useful for converting html and mhtml files into images. Convert HTML to Image can take full length screenshots of websites and supports JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP and TIF formats. It works in the background in a multi threaded batch mode and can, hence, facilitate multiple website captures simultaneously.

A useful tool which can take any number of images in any format and convert them into other formats. Advanced Batch Converter can also resize, rotate, flip, mirror, crop individual or bulk images within seconds hence saving the valuable time previously wasted on doing these operations one by one on each image.

Free Image Converter from VeryDoc supports reading over 100 major file formats (not including sub-formats). It is easy to use and a powerful tool. Perform batch edits and convert multiple files in one go.

XnView is an efficient tool for viewing and converting graphic and image files. It can import approx. 400 and export approx.50 graphic formats with fundamental editing tools to retouch your images.

Easy Graphic Converter is another simple and powerful converter. It can work as Graphic and Image converter as well as a Thumbnail maker Software. It can import and export a wide range of image formats and can work as a batch converting tool as well.

This is a multiple files format converter utility. It supports GIF, JPG, BMP and PNG files and can incorporate batch editing. Easy Graphics file Converter can change the format of one file or set of files simultaneously.

A new and advanced image converter. It supports over 140 graphic formats and has much many options including comprehensive compression, sub-formats, various colourspaces, colour depths. One of the best options is support for conversion for multi-page files.

Another free image converter for windows. Pixillion Image Converter Software has an easy one step process to convert images from one format to another. Its powerful features include batch conversion, advanced image resizing, and conversion to PDF. Users also view their resultant image and format information before actually converting.

This Shareware tool takes BMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TGA, TIF and PCX formats as source and transforms them into icons. Size, shape and color of icons can also be changed. Image Icon Converter is a definite solution for Web designers who work with a number of icons and images.

Imagery is a graphic tool developed for Mac OS. It converts various graphic, sound and animation/video files from a variety of computers and systems into formats acceptable by Mac.

JPEG Photo Converter is a fantastic tool. It accepts several formats as source including BMP, GIF, PNG, TIF, ICO, EXIF, WMF & EMF and converts them into JPG & JPEG formats. User can control compression quality and can also rotate, flip, add text and watermarks to the images.

The online conversion sites diminish the need to download tools in order to perform ripping, encoding or conversion of audios, videos and documents. These sites make the job easier and quicker. Some of the best are:

An online FLV converter service. Find out how to convert a FLV file into AVI, MOV, MP4, 3GP files online and easily. The conversion rate is faster and less lossy than a typical transcoder. When you submit a URL, it’ll download and convert to the desired video format. You can then download the converted file to your hard drive.

The most visited online Video conversion site. You can enter a link, upload a file from their hard drive or browse YouTube. You select the output file format and some additional options. After conversion, you can simply download the file.

Movavi Online is another free online service that allows the users to download videos from YouTube, Google and other video-sharing sites and save them to their iPhone, iPod, and popular video formats like AVI, MPEG, MOV, FLV, MP4, 3GP etc. With Movavi Online, you can also convert videos already on your computer.

The website provides a free online tool to directly convert online FLV to AVI, WMV, MP4, iPod, Zune, PSP. Additional services include FLV Editor, Video to Flash and FLV to Video converters.

This conversion site is dedicated to YouTube videos. Enter the URL of your favourite YouTube videos and download the files converted into MPG, MOV, 3GP, FLV, or MP4.

The CatchVideo web site is free and with unlimited usage. Use the video converter as much as you wish. These converters give output files in MPG, MOV, DVD, MP4, 3GP and FLV formats.

As an online image conversion utility, Image Converter will let you upload your images and convert them to any format of your choice. It supports over 100 major image formats but the most important formats are BMP, DIB, EPI, EPS, GIF, JPC, JPEG, PCD, PCX, PDB, PDF, PGM, PICT, PNG, PSD, SVG and TGA.

This site, on the other hand is a free and easy to use online image conversion service. Users can upload files up to limit of 50Mb. Output format and other settings are made and the links to pictures are emailed to the given email. Converted files are stored on servers for no longer than 10 days.

Convert Hub is the online service dedicated to image conversion. Here, you can transform, convert and change pictures, photos, avatars, drawings, sketches, designs, thumbnails, wallpapers, illustrations, charts, and diagrams–all for free and online.

Image Optimizer gets your images in GIF, JPG or PNG format and optimizes them so that when used on websites they’ll load as fast as possible. Convert images from one format to other.

Online Image Converters is a set of free web based tools that facilitates the users to convert and resize a picture without having to install any software. Here users can convert over 100 image formats, among them BMP, DIP, JPG, EPS, PCX, PDF, PNG, PSD, SVG, TGA, etc. It is quick and easy-to-use.

Fix Picture is a simple and free online tool to do some basic edits to your snaps. You can upload your images and then resize, rotate or put effects on them according to your choice. You can also select the output format and quality.

Here’s a web based document conversion service which allows you to convert office documents between different formats. Available conversions include Microsoft Office to OpenDocument (ODF), Microsoft Office to PDF, and OpenDocument (ODF) to PDF.

Here is an online paid service which lets you convert your documents, spreadsheets, graphics or data base files between different software formats. Files from older word processors and spreadsheets can also be converted to newer formats.

One of the highlights of this online conversion service is the ability to select your delivery method–“Wait for conversion in browser” or “Email me a link to the document.” There are also options for Compatibility, Auto-Rotate Pages, Resolution, PDF Encryption and Watermark.

This service converts commonly used files including those of Microsoft Office, Open Office, graphic images, vector graphic and other formats to PDF. This interactive PDF converter and document creator is quick and reliable.

Media-Convert is 100% free, no software, no registration online service. Just upload the source file, select source and target formats and click on submit to get the file in the specified format. The site is secure and can be accessed from all over the world, 24/7. Supported file format categories are Documents, Text, Archives, Audio, Video, Images and Monophonic & Polyphonic ringtones.

Cometdocs is a free online document conversion interface that offers a large set of document formats. Users can sign up for free, upload their files, select destination format, enter email and the resultant files are emailed to them. Its unique features include documents conversions, audio and video conversions, and legacy format conversion.

This online conversion service also converts documents, images, audio, video and archives into user’s desired formats. Online videos can also be converted using this service. Users can also send up to five files to an email address without making an email and can also convert between measuring units.

This online tool is user friendly and fast in photo editing. Load pictures from your computer or camera and do many changes and corrections on them–rotate, crop, and resize; adjust brightness, contrast, and file size. Then simply save them back to your computer.

The Java Open Document Converter works as a bridge between MS Office and OpenOffice.org. It also automates all conversions supported by OpenOffice.org. It can convert any document to PDF, OpenDocument Presentation (odp) to Flash; PowerPoint to Flash and any format to HTML as well.

Zamzar is another online service which helps users to convert file formats without downloading software. It supports conversion between a wide-variety of different file formats. Some of the categories they deal in are Document formats, Image formats, Music formats, Video formats, compressed formats and CAD formats.

If you’re looking for general converters that can do more than just audio, video and image conversion, then this may be the section for you. Below is a list of conversion tools that work with different types of media and a wide range of document formats.

As it is evident from its name; the tool is a stand-alone application which converts PowerPoint Presentations to flash movies. It is easy to use and provides accurate, small sized, file conversions. The converted files are ideal to be used as a presentation posted on a Website as well as to be used in a Multimedia Marketing CD.

PowerPoint to Video converts PowerPoint Presentations into video files of AVI format. It can keep all the original animations and special effects in the PowerPoint file on the video file and can attached the sound from microphone, CD player, background music etc.

This tool allows you to create an exciting photo slide show with background music, subtitles and transition effects. It has a simplified three part process and is easy to use. You can choose subtitles for each photo and choose from 142 transitional effects.

Format Factory is an all in one multifunctional media converter. It facilitates users with inter-conversion of all popular media formats. Also it comes with capabilities like repairing Damaged Files, support for iPhone and iPod and DVD Ripper. Its support for 47 languages is of course another plus.

This all in one software provides video conversion, audio conversion, video to audio conversion and legally removes DRM (Digital Rights Management) from files with formats like WMV, WMA, M4P, M4V, M4A, M4B, and ASF.

Real7ime Converter or (R7C) is a converter which takes ‘Real Media’ streaming media (Audio Visual) and converts them into AVI, WAV and MP3 formats

As evident from its name the tool helps users to convert any DVD format into iPod video format. Three different modes namely “Direct Mode”, “Batch Mode” and “1 Click Mode” are provided for different requirements. A must have for iPod owners.

A free yet powerful Video and Audio converter software. Some interesting features offered include automatic imports from PSP’s memory card as well as conversion for video games consoles including Xbox 360, Wii, PSP and PS3.

MacLinkPlus Deluxe helps Mac users to better use files associated with Windows. It facilitates users in viewing and translating Microsoft Office Word & Excel 2007 files in .docx and .xlsx format on their Mac! Interface is easy-to-use and the translation is quick and easy.

It is a quick and easy tool to create, share and convert HTML and PDF files into one another. HTML and PDFs are created by easy drag and drop method. The tool supports vista as well large paper sizes for easy CAD conversions.

This is a paid conversion solution with price tag of $59.95. This bundle includes Text Converter, PDF Converter, Text Merger, PDF Merger, PDF2Image Converter.

This software is very helpful in converting WordPerfect documents into MS Word, PDF, RTF or Text formats. Due to integration with the PerfectScript Macro Language users can fully customize their conversion for specific documents.

Ultra Document To Text is a paid solution for converting PDF, RTF, DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLS, XLSX, HTML and MHT documents into text files. It is easy to use and is also available as a standalone ActiveX component which provides the functionality to convert various documents into text.

With this converter users can convert their documents from and to PDF, EPS, PS and image files easily. The key features include; saving web pages in PDF format, Font embedding, resolution and image compression support, support for user defined page sizes, multi-language support, live hyperlink support etc.

It converts files to professionally searchable PDF format (or Image) from any Windows application that supports printing. It provides features like PDF Optimization support, PDF Document Owner and Reader Passwords support and PDF content, resolution and image compression support.

This tool converts AutoCAD drawings to vector PDF. Users can choose layouts or layers to convert, as well as control their PDF output colors. With PDF output options users can choose full color, grayscale, or black-and-white. It is a stand-alone utility and AutoCAD is not required for its working.

This is an effective text or image to database or spreadsheet tool. It reads most files including page image print files from other processes, fixed format, delimited, dBase, structured binary etc. Parses dates, names, addresses and genders and generate fixed format, delimited or dBase files.

OmniFormat is a document conversion utility available as a freeware which supports dynamic conversion and image manipulation of over 75 file formats including HTML, DOC, XLS, WPD, PDF, JPG, GIF, TIF, PNG, PCX, PPT, PS, TXT, Photo CD, FAX and MPEG. OmniFormat include modules like HTML2PDF995, OCR Module and Digital Rights Management.

This is all-in-one document and image conversion software with batch processing support. It can help you batch convert different document formats between Microsoft Office PDF, HTM, HTML, RTF, and TXT. It can also batch convert different image formats including JPG, BMP ,GIF ,TIF ,WMF ,EMF, TGA, RLE and PNG.

Universal Document Converter is one of the most comprehensive software tools to convert documents into PDF, JPEG, TIFF or other graphical files. Its fields of application include Document Sharing and Archiving, Presentation Creation, Web Publishing, Preparing Layouts for the Printshop and Corporate Workflow System Deployment.

Nowadays most CAD programs can import and display raster files. But after it’s imported as a raster file all one can do is look at it or trace over it. If you want to edit a raster file in your CAD program you must first convert it into a vector file. You can do this with TraceArt.

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