On paper Movavi Video Converter is an excellent little application. It includes almost all the features and functions you would look for in a video converter program; however, Movavi’s performance is less than stellar.

Movavi Video Converter outputs to common files types including WMV, AVI, MPEG 1 and 2, MOV, FLV and 3GP. Movavi even has options for HD WMV files and video podcasts. For those with less popular media players an AVI or WMV conversion with a resolution adjustment would work just fine.

We were also disappointed that Movavi converted videos quite slowly. Not only did we have difficulties when we tried converting DVDs, it would usually take longer to convert video on your hard drive than it would take to actually watch the video. However, will point out that Movavi converted typical videos like AVI, WMV and MPEG2 to similarly common files just fine, abet slow. Although, Movavi Video Converter cannot convert FLV files downloaded from the Internet.

There is a button clearly labeled on the toolbar to add DVD files from your own personal, unencrypted DVDs. And unlike the other products you are not faced with a list of meaningless VOB files, Movavi Video Converter tells you exactly where the main feature is located and converts the whole thing at once.

We were excited and had high hopes for Movavi’s DVD to video converter feature, because it is fairly unique to this program. But when tested, Movavi’s we found it took more than three hours to convert a one hour segment from the DVD in the drive. Additionally, we found the video and audio were both distorted. The audio was particularly humorous, everyone in the video sounded like they had been sucking helium.

We found that files converted to MOV QuickTime, is only designed for iPods. You can adjust the resolution size to make the video bigger, but it will be extremely pixilated.

If you feel comfortable adjusting advanced settings you can change video and audio codecs, video and audio bitrates, framerate, sample rate and more. However, for the novice user this could feel intimidating and complicated. We suggest sticking with the default settings.

With Movavi Video Converter you can also capture images of your video like your son sliding into home, or your daughter’s first smile. Images can be saved as BPM, JPEG, GIF or PNG.

We didn’t find anything particularly spectacular about Movavi’s help and support. They include email support, a user guide and FAQ. Unfortunately, it took Movavi several days to return our email inquiry and we had to download the help files, most of which the index section didn’t work. However, the overall in-program help guide answered most of our questions and the program is so easy to use, it’s likely you’ll never have to use the help.

Movavi also has a bundled VideoSuite that includes the same features as Movavi Video Converter as well as additional functionality like the ability to edit video and burn DVDs. 

For a video converter with just as many features, but more stability see the #1 video converter, AVS Video Converter.