Converting videos for free

Mux isn't going to win any points for style, but the website gets plenty for what it does do: allowing users to convert videos from one format to another.

That may sound rather mundane, but the site will convert just about any video you can find, even those on the web. It's extremely simple to use, too. Mux walks you through the conversion process step-by-step and requires very little input from users.

I started off by going to YouTube. Users simply enter the video's web address. It then captures the video and allows you to download the video in any format you want, including MPEG4, Avi and even the Quicktime video format, to name a few.

To some extent, that goes against the main point of YouTube, which is to put videos into the cloud, where they don't eat up space on your computer. The four-minute video I downloaded weighed in at a hefty 20 megabytes, but having the file on the computer gives me the ability to put those videos on a portable device, such as an iPod.

However, users need to be patient. Using the basic conversion feature for just one video took a few hours (the site claimed heavy traffic at the time), but the site will send you an e-mail when it is finished converting the file so you don't have to hang around. Users can also send an e-mail to friends, allowing them to download the video.

Mux doesn't work with just web videos, either. Users can upload their own videos and convert them to any format they want. There is even an advanced section, were users can edit the size, resolution and even the frame rate of the video.

The site also allows users to send videos directly to their mobile phones, but the service doesn't seem to be usable in the UAE. Neither etisalat's nor du's networks (nor any other network in the Middle East) were supported.