VirtualDub Editor's Review

VirtualDub is a pretty good video editing/encoding tool. I've been using it for years and what I can say is the fact that I was quite pleased with it.

The interface is a little bit classic, but if you like the functionality more that eye candy interfaces this application might be a good option for you.

This application doesn't come with built in or bundled codecs except the support for MPEG 1 standard. It uses the installed codecs from your Windows OS and it is doing a pretty good job because you may select advanced settings to everything. This is working both for video and audio codecs and is including the support for every subset of MPEG 4 standard (DivX, Xvid, WMV, ASF, etc.). If the codec has the support for encoding and not just for decoding then you may use it.

Another thing that I love about this application is the fact that it is more than free, it is OpenSource, so it has the community support. This means lots of useful filters for every encoding activity and even more: a MPEG 2 mod for this application because the original doesn't support this standard. Another thing that is great is the fact that the producers of some well known codec packs are including plugins for this application. One of those packs is ffdshow MPEG 4 decoder. So the application has the support for plugins, filters, everything you want for video encoding activities, just name it.

Another nice thing that the application does is the support for video capture. If your video source is properly installed in your operating system, then VirtualDub may capture the signal from that video source and encode it into a video file that you can store on your hard drive.

Since the producer is just a single person the application is not perfect. Sometimes it's crashing for a certain reason or from a reason you might never discover. Certain limitations can appear if you are overclocking some of your hardware components. If you do overclock your CPU you might get an unexpected crash or the application simply refuses to do its job.

Pluses: it's an OpenSource application with nice community support, there are a lot of plugins and filters for this application, the fact that it's OpenSource means that you can find mods of this application with extended functionality and less bugs compared to the original. It is very customizable in order to obtain maximum out of it. It has a nice batch converting/encoding module.

Drawbacks / flaws: it's a little buggy, it's hardware depending sometimes (unexpected crashes), the interface looks a little old. The application is sometimes hard to use if you aren't used with video encoding tools. It doesn't check if the audio stream is compatible with the video stream so you might get an unusable output file. I do recommend the use of mp3 audio codec. Another thing that is missing is the complete support for the Apple MOV video format.

In conclusion: This is a nice, well developed and free application that can suit your own needs for video encoding.

version reviewed: 1.8.1