FormatFactory

1.0 stars

"Beware! Installs hidden browser toolbars"

July 9, 2012  |   By SublightMonster

Version: FormatFactory 2.95

Pros

Performs the functions it claims to perform adequately well, after a good deal of tweaking the settings and online research.

Cons

Turned on my browser to find my startup page hijacked by new toolbars and my old startup settings erased. Found two new toolbars and two auto-updaters in my application manager. Took several tries to uninstall them. Read each page of the installation process carefully, but must have missed this.

Layout is also unintuitive, and settings needed a good deal of adjusting before a file could be successfully converted. Help menu was not helpful, had to look online for other who'd had the same problem.

Summary

I will not be using this again, due to the toolbar issues. Too bad, as it does convert files satisfactorily.

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5.0 stars

"A really useful software to convert files in diff forms"

July 9, 2012  |   By theyoraval

Version: FormatFactory 2.95

Pros

MANAGE TO CONVERT A MESSED VIDEO.

Cons

I am really happy to use this software because it is free and work successfully .

Summary

You should learn the software properly to make it's optimal best usage.

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5.0 stars

"One of the best all-in-one converters!"

June 28, 2012  |   By XThe_GManX

Version: FormatFactory 2.95

Pros

All the popular video, audio and picture formats and converts them to a large range of files.
Has a lot of options to choose from and the ability to customize every aspect of the convertion.

Cons

Rendering is slow and could have more effort
Visually speaking it doesn't attract. The GUI should be better.

Summary

This software is just my favorite for everyday conversions, either being video, audio or pictures. And with the great set of options, it can satisfy the conversion needs of everyone!
With a bit more of work and more constant updates, this would be THE best video converter, and also free!

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5.0 stars

"Excellent, but what is the fuss of Baidu? And Chinese?"

June 26, 2012  |   By ronnietse

Version: FormatFactory 2.95

Pros

Very easy to use, 100% working, many file types, drag and drop interface.

Cons

At the end of the installation all text turned into Chinese characters which is meaningless. I see 4 checkboxes checked, and I can make out Baidu toolbar. I quickly unchecked all checkboxes and started the program. It was in Chinese. I dug into the Language menu (which I had to find by trial and error) to set it to English. My OS is Win7 64bit English.

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1.0 stars

"Contains Malware"

June 21, 2012  |   By calador109

Version: FormatFactory 2.95

Pros

none I could see

Cons

Installs the Ask.com toolbar without permission, nor does it offer a way to not install the toolbar.

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4.0 stars

"Great batchy functionality"

June 14, 2012  |   By sonsinger

Version: FormatFactory 2.95

Pros

Installed on Win7. No problems. All I did was convert a variety of non-iPad-compatible files (and formats) to MP4. Some needed to be rotated. So, I configured a bunch of files to run vanilla, and a bunch to be rotated. All of these files were in a single list within the app. I kicked off the conversion and watched it for a little while. I noticed that it uses both cores of my PC but leaves some spare CPU so I can do other things. It was getting late, so I went to bed. The next morning I put them on my iPad and the results were great. No problems. Did not do anything wierd to the iPad, to iTunes, or to the PC. It just worked.

Cons

I am not familiar with the syntax of the different MP4 schemes that the app presents, but I found one that seemed to work. It had the word "ipad" in it, so I used it. Worked great.

Summary

I cannot wait until I have some time to play with it to see what else it will do. One of the best designed apps, let alone free apps, that I have ever seen. Well thought-out interface.

It should not surprise that it would cause some issues in the Windows world with all of the different flavors of Windows (not to mention all of the levels of patched and unpatched Windows) and all the different hardware components and drivers that are out there. I am surprised anything works on that loose collection of stuff.

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4.0 stars

"Fast, Versatile and Powerfull. Not totally reliable."

June 11, 2012  |   By Xarnufle

Version: FormatFactory 2.95

Pros

Tested on three windows XP genuine PRO-SP3 installations (2 FRA, 1 ENU) on two different computer.
The UI is very user friendly, allowing very fast cut-n-paste of file lists for heavy duty.
Results not toroughly tested, but the required was MP4 and WMV to AVI.
In general, the end result was better than the original, allowing very slow video watching, or stepping frame by frame of very good quality. One wonders how FF does the trick!
Correlalively to the quality of the final output, the conversion time for this typical task is valuably spent.
The list of conversion formats available is litterally tremendous.

Cons

Used on 3 Windows installations, the main PC installation went quickly unreliable. It didn't processed files greater than 10MB average and gave some scary error message. Only a kill of the process got rid of the freezed application (the % converted bar stopped, application not responding).
On the secondary PC, no pronlem (both installation in French). The ENU installation worked fine, though.
The conditions for this malfunction have not uncovered yet, but it made the local recommendation of FF difficult in the meantime.
Our customers, while eager to benefit the wide range of FF conversions.
The time also is a limiting factor: not all of our consultant could easily dedicate one machine for this conversion, and would do it in their main machine, which can be somewhat CPU usage hungry - not everyone in Belgium ram a 4-core+ CPU!

Summary

A product really precious, for not saying mandatory in the helpdesk paraphernalia, but a product I won't give to customers safe installing myself, and will be kept awaiting for news - the described failure showed up after a few hours of FF usage.

All in all, very good.

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5.0 stars

"Fixed a corrupted AVI"

June 6, 2012  |   By rcwis02

Version: FormatFactory 2.95

Pros

Easy to use.

It worked perfectly for what I wanted, which was to fix a precious AVI that would never open due to corruption. I had tried other programs and they failed.

Cons

None so far.

Summary

Try it!

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1.0 stars

"Causes Windows Explorer to crash in Windows 7 64-Bit!"

June 3, 2012  |   By tracyw3000

Version: FormatFactory 2.95

Pros

None-I don't want a program that crashes Explorer as soon as it's installed.

Cons

After installing this program, as soon as I tried to right-click on any of the sub-folders on my main hard drive in Windows Explorer using Windows 7 64-bit, this program causes it to crash. Repeated the process several times to make sure, and the problem immediately ends after this program is uninstalled. I also don't like the automatic installation of the Ask toolbar and changing my home page in Internet Explorer!

Summary

Too bad it crashes Explorer, and changes your Internet settings-it looked like a very promising converter.

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