Format Factory

February 8, 2014

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Although the digital age has brought us many wonders, such as realistic graphics, high-definition audio and the ability to view our pictures on the go, it’s also caused us no end of headaches, especially when it comes to file formats.

How many times have you emailed or handed over a file to a friend that won’t open on his or her computer or mobile device? How many times have you tried to open a file that works perfectly fine on your PC but refuses to be recognised on your tablets? It’s a bit of a pain, and thanks to the hundreds of different picture, video and audio file formats already available, we now have to make sure that the file we want to transfer is compatible with multiple systems and platforms.

Contents

File Factory
Conclusion
Features At A Glance

File Factory

We recently came across FileFactory 3.3.1, a little-known program that can convert audio, video and picture files from one format to another in a matter of seconds.

In addition to the standard conversions, you can also convert DVDs to a range of video files, music CDs to audio files, DVD or CD to .iso or .cso and .iso to .cso and vice versa. You can join videos of different formats and save them as a single, different format. The same goes for audio, and you can mux audio and video together and batch rename all media files within a folder.

Of course, there’s also a special set of options for mobile devices, which Include the default media file types as well as specific Android, lOS, Sony PSP and PS3, Microsoft and Nokia settings that can be tweaked and saved as profiles.

Installation of FileFactory is simple enough: the 55MB file is downloaded from goo.gl/DDfOvm, and all you need to do is follow the on-screen prompt, making sure to untick the option for the Ask bar (unless you want it, although I can’t imagine why) and to decline the extra installation of the Speed My PC Up software (or whatever it’s called). Once installed, just execute it, choose the file type you want to end up with and point the Explorer browser to the files you want converting.

Your choices will be added to the list in the main screen, and all you have to do then is click on the Start button from the top bar menu and away you go.

Conclusion

Aside from the Ask bar and the extra Speed My PC up software (a developer’s got to eat, I suppose), FileFactory Is one of the best all-round conversion tools I’ve used in a long while. It’s quick, can convert more file types than I can possibly mention here and can do all sorts of things with media files for mobile platforms. What’s more, the conversion process doesn’t drastically alter the quality of the picture, audio of video files, so those high-resolutions images you took will still retain their quality even after being converted to some obscure file format for your relative with the bizarre operating system.

All in all, it’s a really handy tool and one that’s likely to remain Installed on our work PC for some time to come.