A relatively small program for conversion from flv videos downloaded from youtube and other sites, into more than 20 types of video and audio formats that include: MOv, Ipod +Iphone, Apple TV PSP , Archos , Creative Zen , Ipiver, Zune ,Xbox,MP3,MP2, m4a ,3gp,divX,VCD ,SVCD ,MOV,WMW,DVD

the program i used is an old version 3.8.0.924 /2004 that came with a free flv player for testing

The program has been tested mostly for Ipod with very good speed regarding to other programs I already used including SUPER but did not liked its audio quality , that seems as like passing throu a tube
No problem with video. The resulted files for mp4 for the lowest video compression are smaller than the flvs
The same problem has been found also for one .WMV conversion and turning down the volume

My rating : 7/10 , but if no problem occurred in the audio i could rate it 10/10



Notice 2 :Just tried the newer version as above. the problem with the audio has been solved tough fidelity is still below the original file. It needs increasing the audio rate to 96 for Ipod at least in order to keep the same audio fidelity
in this I rate it as 9/10

Flash video player : FLV player

Another very interesting flash video program that canbe found in this site :
http://www.martijndevisser.com

and can be doanloaded from:
http://www.download.com/FLV-Player/3640-2139_4-10769546.html

This is another ‘standalone’ player that requires just a simple installation. Its installation is the fastest I ever seen making just the copy into the program files directory and associating the flv/wsf file types with it.

Its interface is very nice comparing to the very poor of Wimpy

Operation:



The program seems good for dragging files into its window . However flash files with different file name , say files that downloaded incomplete from the internet via orbit or any other file manager , once dragged cannot be played
The window is dependent of the video file. Once a file is dragged FLV’s window is resized.

Looking into memory resources , I found that flv player has quite higher memory requirements than Wimpy. A closer look for a basic size goes to 20- 35 % of the CPU (depending on the screen size ) with a steady memory requirements of 16.5 with very slight changes even with window resizing. IN the same case wimpy shoes a level of 3-10 of CPU and ca 5 MB on RAM. ON same instances mplayer occupied 7-17% from CPU and 26 MB RAM

Wimpy is a nice and very small program (ca 2MB )of the second ‘flash video’ generation . The program is a standalone player – ie without any installation required – and can be downloaded from this site :
http://www.wimpyplayer.com/products/wimpy_standalone_flv_player.html
and is available in both Mac and Windows versions

AS you may see from the picture the player is very tiny with nearly nothing special except its drag and drop capabilities.
However comparing to the K-lite codec and its MP classic program as well VLC as most of the flash files are of variable bitrate . the program can still seek the file without being stuck or stopping playing

Next as with all previous wimpy can have more than 2 instances so that more than 2 files can be played instantly .

See here: (at the top right picture you see the singer playing a buzuki , it is a Greek music organ )



The nicest points for this program are the 2 following

1. It is very light. Looking into the memory /CPU usage on the task manager, it uses just 3-10 % of the CPU n the standard size with about 5 MB of RAM , stream dependent. The CPU usage is highly window dependent , that can surpass 25% in cases of 3x the original size



2. its window size is independent from the video file. Someone said that he did not like it, but in contrast I prefer this.