We have put the freeware WinX Video Converter to the test to find out if can hold up to its promise of being that fast and versatile as they say. WinX Video Converter is available for free Windows and macOS.
Input source selection
Getting started with WinX Video Converter is straightforward. You either select a local video file from your PC, online videos, or pictures as an input source in case you want to create a slide-show video from a set of images.
When using the video downloader, you will have to paste the respective video URL from YouTube or any other supported site.
Besides YouTube, WinX Video Converter supports more than 1000 other video sites, including Vevo, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Facebook, Break, and Metacafe.
For some sites such as YouTube, you will be able to select one of the various online versions of your video for downloading. If you want WinX Video Converter to also convert the video into another format, you have to click “Auto convert” in this selection dialogue.
Output Profiles and Settings
Then you can choose one out of countless presets for different devices and formats and decide if you prefer extra fast or high-quality conversion.
WinX Video Converter supports batch processing. You can download and/or convert many videos at once and even merge them into one single file. After adding videos, you can change the conversion settings for each one by clicking on the cogwheel symbol.
There you can change video quality settings such as codec, frame rate, bit rate, resolution, audio setting, or if needed the previously selected output profile.
If needed you can use the built-in editor to trim, crop or expand the source videos and even add subtitle files for embedding them in the output video.
If you chose pictures as source files you can add background music and select interval or overall time for your video slideshow.
Downloading/Converting
Clicking the big RUN button on the lower right starts the download/conversion-procedure. You might want to activate the “Hardware Acceleration” options as this will make WinX Video Converter substantially faster. If you want to “Merge” your videos into just one file, you will have to mark the respective checkbox.
A status dialogue will show you the current progress and give you a remaining time estimate. If your PC has a high-end GPU, conversion can be up to 47 times faster. If you are converting many longer videos at once and without GPU , you might want the option “Shut down computer when conversion completed” comes in handy.
Verdict
WinX Video Converter is a straightforward freeware video downloader/converter with nice extra features such as GPU support, slideshow creation, and merging. If you often download online videos its broad support of basically all video sites is very helpful. Many competitors offer much less and focus just on YouTube and at best offer Vimeo and a few other bigger video sites extra.
