Zamzar - convert your files online - watch this online screencast!
November 11, 2006 at 12:38 pmHave you ever had a file in a format and wanted to convert it to something else? For example Word to PDF? Or .avi to .mov? Then you should definitly check out the new online tool called Zamzar.
What you do is simply choose the source file that can be in many different formats - document, image, music and video. At the moment, 25 source formats are supported. There’s a complete list of supported formats here. They encourage you to send in example of unsupported formats which is good! Also, the maximum source file is 100 MB. After choosing source, you select the destination format, enter your e-mail address and the upload starts which will take some time depending on your uplink bandwidth.
After uploading, the file will be converted and a link to the completed file will be e-mailed to you and the file will be available for 24 hours.
So how does it work in reality? I’ve tried a few different formats and it works very well!
But let’s take it to a real-world scenario: Below you’ll see a screencast on how Zamzar works. Let me tell you how I did it.
I usually record all my screencasts at My Uninstalled Life . Then I Let’s go through the steps:
- Record the screencast with the excellent CamStudio Open Source software using their downloadable Looseless CODEC which gives good quality but still small filesizes
BTW: Do you know any online tool for this step - let me know! - Tried to upload it to YouTube right away - but they don’t support this CODEC
- Upload the file to Zamzar - luckily they support the CODEC. On my 1 Mbit uplink it took 14 mins.
- 1-2 mins later I received an e-mail with the link to the converted file
- Downloaded the file. On my ~24 Mbit downlink it took less than 1 minute (4 MB)
- Upload to YouTube
- Finished
By the way, if you’re interested, here are all the files in their original format if you’re interested in the quality of the clips:
- Original .avi with Looseless CODEC (29 MB)
- Converted to .mov with Zamzar (4 MB)
- Converted to .mp4 with Zamzar (4 MB)
- Converted to .mpg with Zamzar (4 MB)
- Converted to Xvid .avi using SUPER (2 MB)
Before Zamzar, I used either SUPER or VirtualDUB to convert it to a format that can be uploaded to YouTube but still keeping the quality, for example the XViD CODEC.
Here’s how Zamzar’s interface works - EASY!
Hope Leman
Saturday, November 11th, 2006 at 8:16 pmNeat blog. Found it via Digg via R-Mail. I have tried Zamzar. Workswell–I hope they will soon enable users to convert Web pages to PDF.
As to, “I want to uninstall all applications from my desktop and only use tools on the web.” Yeah! Helps us do that! Yeah!