SmartFFmpeg 1.6.5

The whole program is a single 178KB executable and six small text files, with no installer and nothing written to the registry.

It does not convert anything itself, it builds the command and hands it to FFmpeg, which you supply separately.

That is the trade: almost no weight, and one setup step you cannot skip.

Set It Up First, in This Order

Doing this before you first launch SmartFFmpeg saves the confusion of opening a program that appears to do nothing.

1. Download FFmpeg and extract it somewhere permanent, such as C:\ffmpeg.
2. Install the Microsoft .NET Framework if Windows prompts for it on first run.
3. Extract SmartFFmpeg to its own folder and run it. There is no setup wizard.
4. Open the Options menu and point it at your ffmpeg.exe. Nothing works until you do.

One upside of that arrangement is that you control the engine. Point it at a current FFmpeg build and you get current codecs and current security fixes, without waiting for the front end to be rebuilt.

What It Converts

The presets cover the everyday jobs: pulling audio out of a video, turning that audio into MP3, and re-encoding video into something a phone or an older device will play.

On the audio side it handles MP3, AC3 including 5.1, uncompressed WAV, and extraction of existing AAC or AC3 tracks without re-encoding them. If you are unsure which AAC variant you want, our guide explains what AAC-LC and AAC-HE actually mean.

On the video side it targets MP4 and H.264, WebM, MPEG-2 for DVD authoring, AVI, and the older mobile formats such as 3GP and H.263 that still turn up in archived footage.

Around that sit the conveniences: drag-and-drop importing, automatic update checks, preset output names and extensions, and control over the process priority FFmpeg runs at. Settings can be applied to every task at once or set per task.

The Text Files Are the Real Feature

Open the SmartFFmpeg folder and you will find Presets.ini alongside ACodecs.txt, VCodecs.txt, Formats.txt, Dimensions.txt and Targets.txt.

Those are the program's dropdown menus, in plain text. The codec lists, the container list, the resolution presets and the conversion profiles are all editable with Notepad.

That matters more than it sounds. If FFmpeg gains an encoder the front end has never heard of, you add a line to a text file rather than waiting for a new release.

Where SmartFFmpeg Fits Against the Other FFmpeg Front Ends

Four programs on this site put a window in front of FFmpeg, and they are not interchangeable.

If the command line is not the barrier you thought it was, our comparison of a GUI against a command line is worth reading before you install any of them.

Who Should Look Elsewhere

The tell is the setup step. If installing a second program and pasting a file path is more friction than you want, this is the wrong tool and you will be happier with something self-contained.

HandBrake and Shutter Encoder both carry their own encoders and give you far more control over quality than a fixed preset list can.

For trimming rather than converting, LosslessCut cuts without re-encoding and Avidemux handles quick cut-and-convert jobs.

For pure audio work there are better specialists. qaac reaches Apple's encoder for AAC quality, and eac3to is the one for disc audio and AC3.

BatchEncoder covers queued conversion across formats if you want a list running unattended.

If FLAC is what you are producing, X FLAC Encoder and FLAC Frontend both wrap the reference encoder directly.

And for one file with nothing to install at all, our online audio converter does it in the browser.

Quick questions

The rest of the audio encoders category covers the specialists if a general-purpose front end is not what you need.

Download SmartFFmpeg 1.6.5 and see how it handles your files, or tell us how you got on if you have used it before.