Everybody carries a smartphone these days whether its an Apple iPhone or Android based phone. These smartphones are able to play videos in MP4 format in addition to other formats. But MP4 format is desired in smartphones over other formats because it has a higher compression rate at an acceptable video quality. If you have a video files collection that you want to put on your smartphone, then you may want to convert them into MP4 format first. You can use freeware Handbrake application to convert all kinds of videos into the MP4 format.
Handbrake is an open-source application that is able to help you convert any video format into the MP4 format. It is a multi-platform and multi-threaded video transcoder which is available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows. It is designed using the Microsoft .NET 4.0 technology. So you need to install .NET 4.0 redistributable in Windows before you can start using it. You can download .NET 4.0 from http://mcaf.ee/b5nyx.
Using Handbrake is extremely easy. Just run Handbrake from its desktop shortcut and click on the Source button in the toolbar. You can select a single video source file or an entire folder containing the video files. Then choose a preset from the right-hand side list of presets. You can also customize the outpur settings for various transcoding sections like video, audio, subtitles etc. Finally, click on the Start button to start the conversion.
Depending on the number of files, file sizes and quality of output, it would take a shorter or longer time to complete. By default, the output files are saved in the same folder as the original file. The new output files have an extension .M4V. You can then play them using your default video player by double-clicking on them. Or you can copy them over to your smartphone and enjoy them while you are outside.
So if you want to be able to play all your videos on your iPhone or Android phones, just convert them into the MP4 format. You can use Handbrake to convert them into MP4 in such a way that they can be played well on those devices. You can download Handbrake from its website at http://handbrake.fr/.