VideoProc Converter – Never be hindered by an incompatible format

by Marcel Dufresne

April 25, 2024

     VideoProc Converter is your one-stop audio and video conversion application. Capture and convert video from the Internet into a compatible device format. Audio can be converted to over 400 different formats. You can edit, cut, merge, crop, rotate, slow down, and speed up videos with the built-in toolbox. Record your computer screen and webcam in various modes. VideoProc is an easy and fast solution for all levels of users. Read on to have a better idea of all this application can do for you.

     The first reason I needed to use VideoProc was to convert a video from one format to another so that I could open it. Not all formats are created equal and some are unusable by my Mac. VideoProc can quickly convert those pesky rare formats into a usable form. The trickiest ones are the older, obsolete formats. VideoProc can handle almost all of these. Simply drop the file into the VideoProc window and choose the desired output format. Press ‘Run’ and watch the progress bar quickly work its way across the screen. You can even do batch conversions by dropping several files into the window at once. 

     Another task I found useful was to remove the visual part from a clip and convert the video to music for listening. VideoProc will quickly and losslessly extract the audio track from the video and save it as MP3, AAC, OGG, FLAC, WAV, PCM. or whatever. VideoProc is also able to change a video to an image sequence or snap an image out of a video to use as a thumbnail. VideoProc supports video conversions for YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, and other mainstream websites with no further adjustments required as the presets are already there for you. 

     Another handy tool of VideoProc is the ability to convert video into other sizes and formats. Encompassing 320 video codecs and formats, VideoProc allows you to change video to the target format and make it easy to play. Without any further adjustment, you can play the video directly on your devices after converting. As an example of how easy it is to use, I will walk you through converting video to an iPhone-supported format. First, open VideoProc and click on “Video” on the homepage. Hit “+Video” to import the video that you are going to convert. Next, look at the bottom of the window, and in the “Device” panel, select “iPhone”. Alternatively, you can go to the “Target Format” in the bottom left, where you can find well-organized device formats to work with. Select Apple Device > to iPhone Video, and choose the one based on your device model. Lastly, click the Run button to convert your video to an iPhone-supported video.

     I have been using sounds on my computer for over 30 years. As such, I have some very antiquated and obsolete formats. VideoProc can convert almost any audio from one format to another. The process is virtually the same as my previous example. Just open the application, and click “Video Converter” on the main interface. Next, drag your audio file to this software or click “+Music” to manually select it. Select your output format like WAV, WMA, M4R, etc. according to your needs. Click the “Run” button and wait for a few seconds. Presto, you have a converted audio file.

     Compressing video can effectively help reduce file size and save computer space. VideoProc supports high-efficient codecs allowing you to compress large video files to the target size while keeping the best picture quality. I was able to compress a 1.2 GB video to 0.8 GB and play it with no noticeable quality reduction. Many compression apps require that you play the compressed file through their app. This is not the case with VideoProc.

     VideoProc gives you full editing control. You can quickly add various effects, subtitles, and watermarks to make your video stand out. If you click “Effect”, then you’ll see a window to adjust brightness, contrast, hue, gamma, and saturation. Click “Subtitle” to add (srt, ass, ssa) subtitles from your computer, or search for suitable subtitles online and then add them to the video. With “Watermark” you cannot only add text but also images to personalize your video. You can adjust transparency, position, size, font, and colour, etc. You can cut, crop, change the play rate and so much more. The toolbox provides users with a lot of options, including the most commonly used functions, such as trim, split, and merge. It can help you rotate videos by 90, 180, or 270 degrees and also mirror/flip videos vertically and horizontally.

     VideoProc comes with a free downloader engine which lets you download videos, audio, and playlists from over a thousand sites. VideoProc allows you to bulk download media with original resolution and the downloading speed is fast. If you wish to download a full playlist/channel just copy and paste the URL of the playlist, then click “Download Full Playlist” to save all files offline. In your browser, you can search for a movie, a song, a product name or anything you want, get the URL and paste it in. Click “Analyze” and a few seconds later, VideoProc will show you a list of relevant results. Just select the files you need and click “Download Selected Videos” to save them on your computer.

     The recording feature of VideoProc Converter AI is free yet versatile. You can record the whole or part of the screen on your computer with HD quality. Click the gear icon on the upper right corner to personalize the recording settings, such as recording quality and whether to show mouse clicks. VideoProc enables you to record both screen and webcam, which is very convenient for you to make professional tutorials, reviews, or presentations for sharing with others or uploading on YouTube.

     If you have some DVD movie discs, you should convert these to digital. The CD/DVD external drives are the only means to play these at present and new computers do not have this hardware installed anymore. Quickly digitize your disks into popular formats like MP4, MOV, AVI, etc to play on any modern devices and media players. 

     There is a very informative online user manual as well as a large video tutorial library. All the uses and functions of VideoProc are fully explained in these tutorials. Click here to download a free version of the application to test out the various functions available. There are some specific functions disabled but for the most part, it is fully functional. The main drawback is that you are limited to a maximum of 5 minutes of conversion at a time. If you have any audio or video conversions that you need to work on, get the free version and try it out. Once you see how useful it is you might end up buying the full unlimited version.

ScreenMemory – Catalogue Your Computer’s Screen History

by Marcel Dufresne

March 9, 2024

     Have you found yourself struggling to recollect the specifics of a video meeting, or wasting time scouring through countless webpages for a piece of data you know you’ve seen somewhere before? How about just trying to remember what software application you were using for a specific tidbit of data? ScreenMemory is designed to turn such frustrating experiences into a thing of the past. By default, this application captures screenshots of your screen every minute. The screenshots appear in a video-like player with a timeline at the bottom. The best part of this is that the pages can be searched for specific content. While ScreenMemory is processing your screenshots, it is also processing the text within them. With this, you can search for almost anything (such as a URL or a name) that you have interacted with. ScreenMemory will take you straight to that page. Whether you’re tracking your work hours, preparing for a daily review, looking for some snippet of information, or simply someone who surfs the Internet, ScreenMemory provides you with a comprehensive, searchable timeline. 

     Using it is a snap. As soon as you launch the application, it starts taking those snapshots. The specific time interval is of your choice. It can be seconds, a minute or up to an hour. Use the preferences to make your choice. The menu bar allows you to pause operation, take a screenshot that is out of sequence, open the ScreenMemory viewer, or quit the application altogether. ScreenMemory works seamlessly in the background. You are not even aware that it is running until you find a need to do a search. 

     To navigate your timeline, you can either click on the timeline itself or use the controls found at the bottom of the application window. Pick the day, scroll to either end of the captures or jump ahead or back in smaller increments. You can also use the arrow keys, with OPTION as a modifier, to jump further.

     ScreenMemory has a host of attractive features. Along with those features already mentioned, ScreenMemory can capture screenshots from multiple monitors. The screenshots are High-Resolution. There is no compromise in the quality of the shot. You can use the mouse to scroll and zoom in to see things in better detail. Because the text processing is performed locally on the device, your user privacy is ensured. That being said, I recommend blacklisting certain information-sensitive apps, such as a password manager application. This is easily done through the preferences for the app. With this application, you have a complete overview of when you worked, and with the screenshots, you can literally see what you worked on at that moment in time. The window also displays the icon of the application that was being used at any specific time. 

Search Result

     Here is a list of some practical uses for ScreenMemory. First, you could use it to recap your previous day’s work. This would serve as a reminder of what you did and you can now start your new work day with what you did yesterday now fresh in your mind. It provides an overview of what you did, meetings, calls, and anything else you worked on. How about recalling who was at a video meeting? Next, you might use it to recall which website had that tidbit of information. There is a history search included in all browsers, but they require you to remember the title of that page. Scrubbing through the video player in ScreenMemory, it’s easy to catch a glimpse of something you recognize. While some of us have perfect memory, I certainly don’t. Having a simple way to instantly see what I was doing at “roughly lunchtime, last Monday” helps me remember or even retrieve things that might have been lost. Lastly, you can quickly track the time on how long you spent on a particular task. The visual display format of ScreenMemory makes it easy to accurately see how long you worked on certain things.

     I am always on the lookout for out-of-the-ordinary applications and ScreenMemory certainly is one of these. It transforms my computer screen into a comprehensive, retrievable archive. By regularly capturing screenshots, it provides data that’s not only easily browsable but also searchable. Recapture an elusive detail or review your screen activity history with the simple, user-friendly interface that is ScreenMemory. Download the free version which provides a 24-hour history for one monitor. This will be more than enough for you to decide whether the one-time purchase would be of worth to you. Click here to read more about this application. Let ScreenMemory catalogue your computer’s memory with pinpoint recall and searchability.

Beamer 4 – A great way to stream video to the Apple TV

  A few years ago I started watching video files from my computer monitor. The screen was a bit small, but the video quality made up for it. This eventually gave rise to getting an Apple TV to rid myself of all of the cables connecting the two devices. With an Apple TV, I was now in a position to wirelessly mirror what was on my computer to the TV. The placement of the computer and the TV were not limited to the length of the cables I had bought. The computer could now be in another room, and I would still be able to view the files. The next stage in this evolution was the acquisition of an application called Beamer. Beamer is the easiest way to stream video from a Mac to an Apple TV without mirroring. It works like a regular desktop media player, but the video plays through Apple TV. That was nearly 10 years ago. Now there is Beamer 4.

     To my way of thinking, the main advantage of using Beamer has to be freeing up the computer. You can use free apps like VLC to watch your video via mirroring. However, this ties up your computer. You cannot do anything else with it while it is streaming video. Your TV will only show what is actually present on the computer monitor, hence the word mirroring. Beamer does not mirror the computer screen. It acts as its own streaming app. The only thing showing up on the Apple TV is the video files you are sending to it via Beamer. This way you can show a movie to the kids and still use your computer to do other work. If your computer is in another room, you can be busily working away and still be streaming the video across. 

     To use Beamer, first turn on the Apple TV and start up the Beamer app. Then, just drop any movie file (AVI, MKV, MOV, MP4, WMV, FLV) onto the app’s viewing screen (or on the icon in the dock). The loading bars on the Apple TV will whirl around a couple of times and then the video will start playing. This is much faster than the mirroring process. The video looks exactly as it would if you streamed it from iTunes or played it directly from the Apple TV. You can even use your Apple TV’s remote to control playback. On the computer, Beamer’s window shows the video’s control frame. There is also a playlist which provides some extra control if you load in more than one video. You can drag items up or down to rearrange them. Beamer will play the videos sequentially. The Beamer window shows you the current playlist position of the video. Unlike Screen Mirroring, Beamer is specifically optimized for video playback at the highest quality. You may not notice a difference in the picture quality with a newer Mac, since their monitors have so many pixels. But if you had an older monitor, it would be noticeable. You can pause, fast-forward and rewind the movie using the Apple TV remote. No need to get up and pause the viewing from the computer. 

     I like watching foreign films, which thus require subtitles. Beamer will automatically differentiate between multiple subtitle files in a folder and it automatically picks the language based on your Apple TV’s Subtitle Language preference. The default is thus English for me as this is what I set up. If you wish to practice some Spanish, and you have that subtitle file available, you can choose a different language for the subtitle from the drop-down Controls in the menu bar. If you drop the video and the subtitle file in together, Beamer will automatically link the two and play them simultaneously. Beamer does not allow you to edit the size or the colour of a subtitle. You must use the Apple TV to do that. Choose General, Accessibility, then Style and Apple TV will present you the options for the styling of subtitles, including the font used, the size, and the colour. I often like to have the subtitle in yellow so I can read it better through the various backgrounds.

     Another useful option to Beamer is the automatic start now, finish later function. Beamer remembers what you were watching and at what point in the video you stopped. When you return to Beamer, everything is exactly where you left it. Just press play and continue watching. The queued-up bunch of videos in Beamer is still set up for you to watch in succession. If you add another to the list, it will be placed at the end. To delete a video from the playlist, you select the item and press the Delete key, or, if you want to remove the video that’s currently playing, right-click in the Beamer window and choose Remove From Playlist from the resulting contextual menu.

Screenshot

     The only problem I have had with Beamer is that sometimes it can’t locate my Apple TV. If Beamer can’t find the Apple TV you can reboot the Apple TV or try switching off your WiFi and then turning it on again. This is usually quicker than restarting the Apple TV (tip: hold down the menu button and the down arrow on the Apple TV remote for 6 seconds to quickly restart). I rarely had to do this but a problem does exist. It just takes a minute or so to reboot the Apple TV, and then everything is in sync. Whatever the problem is, it is a very minor inconvenience. 

     If you are familiar with Beamer 3 application, Beamer 4 has some improvements. I found that I was able to play some video files that Beamer 3 had trouble with. It was better able to render this problematic file. Also, some old TV programs do not fill the monitor with Beamer 3 due to the older TV format. Beamer 4 somehow got around this problem and filled my monitor with the picture. It is much nicer watching full screen. That being said, Beamer 4 does not let my computer sleep while it is playing. This was a feature that I really liked with the old Beamer application. It ran in the background and did not stop my computer from sleeping. Fortunately, you can do it yourself by using the keyboard shortcut: press Control-Shift-Eject at the same time. This will shut down the display of your Mac. Mirroring the computer monitor also prevents it from sleeping. 

     You can try Beamer with a free limited trial version. Click here to download your copy. After the trial time has elapsed, you can use an in-app purchase to get the registration code. With Beamer 4 you can stream movies from Mac to Chromecast, Apple TV, and AirPlay 2-enabled smart TVs. You will need an Apple TV and at least OS X Mavericks (10.9) or Yosemite (10.10) to run Beamer. I strongly suggest you download the trial and see how convenient it can be. When I first read about this app, I thought, “Why would I want this app when VLC, which is free, plays all my videos?”. After I tried it out, I saw its benefits. You won’t lose anything by just trying it out but, if you are just like me, you might end up switching.