CyberLink MediaShow Espresso

There are few things you can do on a computer that are more tedious than waiting for a video to convert into a format that you can watch on an iPod. If you are only interested in doing some small-scale converting, there are plenty of free tools available on the internet to get you started. However, if you get really into this kind of thing, it might be worth upgrading to something that can do the job faster and easier. MediaShow Espresso takes all the professionalism of CyberLink’s other video-converting software and distils it into this small but perfectly formed program.

Its drag-and-drop interface lets you simply grab video files – even a whole folder – and drop them onto the workspace. You can then convert them from their existing format to a range of popular options (compatible with Apple, Microsoft, Sony, YouTube and MPEG) in just a couple of clicks.

On the performance side, the software works in harmony with your graphics chip, which means it will be particularly fast with graphics chips from ATI and Nvidia that have been specifically designed to speed up the processing of video. Anyone who converts a lot of video will appreciate that this is a real bonus, because the process is one of the most demanding things you can do on your PC.

The software will also turn your PC off when it’s done, so you can save up all your video-processing chores until you’re about to go to bed and rest easy that your PC won’t be wasting electricity all night.

The downside for some will be that it doesn’t work with copy-protected video, so you can’t use it to convert things like movies. However, this is a good thing if you don’t want to inadvertently break the law.

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