good, but could be better

3.5 stars, round down to balance the other ratings.

i bought this app mid 2014 and it works well in encoding, etc. however, i think there are room for some simple, but important improvements.

for starters, the encoding concept is based on “State" instead of “File", which i think is a poor choice. State pertains to “am i encoding?” instead of File “what am i encoding?”. For example, once an encoding has started (say iPad encoding) *every next encoding* you add while the first is running must also be iPad, ie, you can’t start one iPad then add another for iPhone (ie, State vs File). if you’re doing one encoding here and there, then this view works, but not if you have a lot of encodings to do. MANY times i’ve wanted to start some AVIs with my custom settings and also add some MP4s with iPhone, but you can’t.

similarly the preferences can’t be modified *while encoding* (ie State vs File) and most prefs will be for all encodings (State vs File). but consider the preference for CPU usage (high, med, low) – that doesn’t have anything to do with the encoding type, but simply how hard your computer is working. it would be better to have a simple drop down outside of prefs (or a menu selection) to select CPU power at *any time*. this would be handy if you’re going away for awhile you can select CPU high, then when you get back (and you queue is still encoding) it’s possible to switch to CPU low so the computer is actually usable for other tasks.

between these two issues, it was necessary to shuffle around encodings, stop encodings in process, or plan when i was going to be gone or asleep, etc. which quickly becomes tiresome mental gymnastics for an “easy to use” app.

in short, the app is good, but not great – the concept breaks down quickly if you have a lot of different encodings to do. also the app hasn’t been updated in over 18 months and the UI could stand a refresh. i hope it’s not abandon-ware because i do think it’s a good option.

phantbot about AnyVideo Converter HD