Media Converter share online

Tools to convert file types, particularly audio and video files, are among the last to move from the desktop to the browser. Part of the problem is CPU usage during the conversion (it’s expensive to do this online) and part of the problem is the upload time for the user.

We’ve written about a couple of products that do online file conversion, Zamzar and Media Converter. But Marseille, France based Soft4file, which we tested our yesterday evening, appears to be a much more robust product than anything we ’ve seen previously, and they've added developer tools to help build their functionality directly into other web services. The service is in private beta, but there is some information on the home page and you can request an invitation to join.

Soft4file Video Converter allows users to import files to the service in a number of ways, including uploading from a hard drive or simply putting in the URL of a video froa YouTube or other popular online video service. But they also allow users to upload videos via a RSS feed, so new enclosures from future show will automatically be uploaded as well. The company has also created bookmarklets and a Firefox plugin to import a video from a currently viewed website to the service with a single click.

Once files are uploaded, they can be converted to all of the usual formats and then downloaded. And they’ve also used RSS intelligently here as well – they’ve created a RSS feed for all of a user’s converted files, so they can simply be gathered from a feed reader without going back to the Soft4file site each time.

タグ：Media Converter