Media converters is an overcrowded, saturated, category, which means that users have a lot of options to choose from, and developers have a hard time to find a place. Is there a place in that crowd for MiniTool’s converter? Upon installing the application there appeared the first negative experience. Clicking the option to customize the setup instead of just proceeding with the default and hidden options, I saw this option to be part of the developer’s work, which means that information about my use of the program would be revealed to the developer. I’m sorry MiniTool, but this is not fair play. Options that regard privacy are not hidden as “normal” or “default”, they must be fully and immediately open requiring explicit approval. So, I denied (unchecked) this option and started the installation.

The program’s interface is dark and simple as is the norm today. Nothing exciting, but OK. The program’s settings are really minimal, which is not always a good thing. For example, you can’t convert your audio files to VBR MP3, you cannot convert your movie to a purely custom resolution, let’s say 740X308. What is even more important, you cannot convert a video file keeping the original resolution. Unless the original resolution happens to coincide with one of the resolutions the program supports, you have to change it upon conversion.

Then I opened my video library dragged an MKV file to drop it in the program’s window and try to make a conversion. Unfortunately the program refused to accept the file and I thought it might not support MKVs; but I tried to load my video by using instead of drag and drop an “Open” dialogue, which resulted in my file being accepted! Obviously drag and drop doesn’t work always as expected.

The program exhausted my i7 quad core processor without actually being fast in converting the file. What is more important, even when 6% percent of the conversion was complete, I was unable to click the output and preview the result, to decide if I wanted to go on or cancel the conversion. My regular video converter, AVCfree, let’s me do that immediately, even before it reaches 1%! Finally MiniTool’s converter is unable to embed subtitles in the output. In case that you need this option, this is surely a converter that won’t help.

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