Review Details
Company – FreeTime
Version – 1.90
Operating System – Windows XP
Summary
A while back I wrote on this great free media converter, today I thought I’d write a full review on the software. Format Factory is an ‘all-in-one’ free media converter that lets you convert files among all popular image, audio and video formats.
Ratings
Review
Format Factory comes with 4 skins, with a bunch of new age icons and color combinations for its skins. Personally I like the ‘Obsidian’ skin, with the massive inventory of features, the interface is arranged with a sidebar menu to convert video, audio, images or to burn it in separate expandable menus. The interface is pretty much perfect however I don’t like the occassional weird blurring of the header ‘effect’ which wasn’t seen in previous versions. It also supports 48 languages so if you are viewing this with Google Translate the application should have native support for your language too!
Format Factory is very easy to use, at a glance, even though it has plenty of features, you have access to each of them mostly with a click of a button or with 2 or 3 at the most, all the icons are supported with text below it so all the features are pretty much self explanatory.
Format Factory takes very little memory in comparison to its competitors. While on standby it takes an efficient 25MB of memory and doesn’t consume much of CPU resources. During conversion, the computer is still very usable with room for enough multi tasking, it does drain the CPU a bit while converting as all other converters however comparatively it allows for some alternate processes to be run.
Format Factory is packed with all the features you’d look for in a media converter. It supports a massive inventory of file formats in all forms of media (images, video, audio), burning from a CD or DVD, and also little features like tray conversion reducing clutter, shutdown after completion, pausing of conversion (in case another heavy process needs to be run while conversion) and more. It also supports merging of files and addition of subtitles to converted video files. The only feature it lacks is the ability to burn to CD/DVD, while this is a feature of a dedicated burning tool, the addition of this feature could well make it the ‘ultimate’ media conversion and burning tool. It also does not support any appending of effects to a converted image, video or audio while images maybe appended with text.
This is arguably one of the best freeware products around. Freeware has a broad base of software products and giving it a title of ‘one of the best’ in that niche is giving it a lot of authority, however I could safely say it deserves it, for the perfection in the program, the vast number of features and in comparison to the rest of the products in this category of software which are usually shareware, Format Factory is indeed one of the best freeware around.
Format Factory comes with a fully compiled help file complete with screenshots in English and Chinese and pointers on how to use the application, thus even the completely clueless newbie can get the software to work, this help file coupled with the self explanatory interface makes using this application a breeze even for the novice. There’s also a support Email if you are unable to click a mouse and still can’t get things to work.
The application is highly portable, while a separately labeled portable version is not available, the application has handlers to create preferences even though it might be stored in the registry (I didn’t see an INI file) without running into an error thus the folder can be copied on a portable drive and on launch it would seamlessly ‘install itself’ into the local system.
The program displays two links within the application to eBay and BrotherSoft, making it ‘adware’ however it troubles no one and actually makes the interface cooler with the two logos, a small price to pay for all the benefits of the application.
Overall
Reading the review, you’d see I have no complains except for a little thing here and there, however if you would be converting a file at any point, close your eyes and pick Format Factory right away and you’d save yourself time and thank me afterwards.
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I would rate this software with 9 points out of 10. As you said, the main advantages that it has are the interface and the price (since its freeware). The main disadvantage is that it consumes a lot of memory. 25mb is very much.
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I Use Format Factory, What Converter Works Like Creative’s Zen Converter and Makes The File Smaller?
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Format factory allows similar conversion, it has a special creative zen video conversion setting as well.
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Hi all, How to format HP laptop and return to factory settings? what you say?
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