Ever since VisualHub died1, the world of video encoding on the Mac has been a scattered mess. Handbrake has been providing their free client for a while now, and it’s fairly good for most purposes. However the UI and workflow leave much to be desired. I’ve been testing this app for a while now, and with the newer 1.9 update it’s finally ready to be written about. RoadMovie from Bitfield software is one solid piece of work, both in terms of UI as well as functionality.
Beautiful mix of features and grace
Starting with the simple, gorgeous, and easy to understand window, RoadMovie is ready to accept any2 media you can throw at it. It takes a few unnecessary seconds to process each file, but it doesn’t matter if you’re dumping a whole bunch of them in. Next is what? If you just want to reencode those videos to play on your iPhone, hit the Start button and you’ll have your files ready on the desktop. But life’s not always so simple is it? Yes it is.
Screenshot’s by Milind, as he desperately tries to promote his favourite TV show
However, if you want to make it more complex, there’s room for that. You can choose between the different types of device presets like iPod, AppleTV, Wii, Xbox, etc. And for those video monkeys who love to fine tune their encodes to their own specifications, you can customise your presets using QuickTime’s encoding engine. Select your preset (best done in the Application Preferences), and then set the output. You can save to a folder, iTunes, or even directly beam it up to YouTube. But wait, you can add destinations to the list including any FTP locations, Amazon S3, or even your MobileMe iDisk. I tried an FTP site and it worked flawlessly.
That’s for the media encoding bit, but RoadMovie has more than that. You can hard code subtitles to your movies. Simply drag in the subtitle file, and you’re done. You can preview the video with the subtitles, and make adjustments to the delay, if necessary. There’s also room for chaptering your video, helpful if it’s educational, or perhaps a music concert. Lastly, you can also remove video and audio tracks, useful if you want to get rid of extra audio tracks in different languages to keep the file size down.
The [Confused] Verdict
Features wise RoadMovie couldn’t impress me more. It’s got everything from the most simple drag and drop, to customising presets. But what about the output?
Since RoadMovie uses the QuickTime engine to encode video, the performance is the same as many of the video encoders out there. You can export a video using QuickTime to see how long it will take for one of your TV shows to get into iTunes. In my tests on a 2.1 Ghz Core 2 Duo MacBook, it took 25 mins to encode 30 mins of 480p Xvid video. VisualHub’s FFMpeg engine was much faster than QuickTime, but batch encoding a bunch of videos through the night kind of takes the time out of the equation. Moreover, the developer notes that using an Elegato Turbo hardware encoding, it’s way faster than with FFMpeg, a claim I could not test.
I did look up reviews of this app, and there were a few that said the Wii and PSP videos didn’t quite turn out right. I didn’t have a chance to test video out on them, so I can’t say. I will note however that there are some videos that convert badly, and get stuck in between. Same videos convert just fine with QuickTime or any of the others, and even with RoadMovie if you run them again. But so far with the 1.9 update I haven’t seen any of that, but it’s possible I haven’t converted enough. It’s also considerably more stable now. Though, even if you do have issues, the developer support is outstanding. Really helpful and quick to respond.
At $25, it’s a damn good app for simple drag and drop encoding. Of course, take note that there are free apps out there including VideoMonkey, Handbrake, or even the built in QuickTime X player, but I think RoadMovie trumps them all in terms of ease of use and functionality. Give the trial a spin, and check whether the media works on your devices.
