If you really need a particular video file then the web is packed with tools to help. Install something like Orbit Downloader, say, and it’s easy to capture that movie trailer, streaming video, or whatever else has caught your attention. Of course if you want to play it on your phone or iPod, edit the video or burn it to DVD then you’ll often need to convert it to a more useful format. And there’s no more capable tool for this kind of media encoding than SUPER.

Launch the program (right-click its shortcut and select Run As Administrator if you’re using Vista) and the sheer volume of options on offer can seem intimidating, but relax, it’s easier than it looks. Browse the Output Container list and you’ll find a list of presets that will set up the program for common tasks. If you have a video that you want to convert to 3GP for a mobile, MP4 for an iPhone, iPod or PS3, or just a VOB file to burn to DVD, then choose the relevant option here and everything else will be set up for you.

If there’s no easy preset than you can still set things up manually. If you just want a video that’s compact and easy for you and other PCs to play, for instance, choose the AVI output container. Select DivX or XviD as the Output video codec, and MP3 as the Output audio codec. Choose the resolution and frame rate you need, and set the Bitrate to define the quality and file size you’d like (1000 is low resolution but small, 6000 plus is DVD quality but large).

Enable the final options you need – we check Hi Quality, Top Quality and 48K audio for the best files – and adjust audio quality if you need it. Then drag and drop your files onto the working area (or right-click the program and select Add Multimedia Files to add them manually) and click Encode to begin the conversion process. This makes heavy use of the CPU, so we would recommend you just leave your PC alone for a while until Super has finished. It shouldn’t be too long – we’ve found the program is significantly faster than most of the competition.

SUPER‘s an excellent way to convert video files between various formats, then, but that’s just one of its abilities. It can also extract the audio track from a video, convert from one audio format to another, even create an animated GIF (select the GIF output container), or sequentially join video files (convert part1.avi and part2.avi into everything.avi). This can be a little complicated sometimes, but if you’re happy to experiment, try different options, then we think you’ll come to agree that SUPER is one of the best media encoders around.