Format Factory aims to become the only conversion tool you’ll ever need. Or so it seems. It offers the user conversions between audio codecs, video formats, different document types, various image formats, and even a number of disc-to-file extraction options. Besides, you’ll find some interesting extra utilities, such as a video downloader, a screen recorder, or a video and audio joiner.
This is a free, multi-purpose conversion tool with a curious variety of re-encoding and ripping functions, as if they were compiled from a series of other media utilities. Thus, it can be described as an exhaustive tool, though not as comprehensive as other media-specific tools. It provides users with a nice variety of conversion tools that many will find highly useful, as long as they don’t require to perform any specialized editing or other complex functions.
The interface is divided into various sections named after the media they deal with – Video, Audio, Picture, Document, a section for ripping content from various disc types, and Utilities. This last section is a compilation of tools not directly related with file conversion (such as Screen Record, Video Downloader, Audio Joiner, Video Joiner, Rename, Mux, etc.) that you will also find in the media section they’re related to.
As it is the case with many all-in-one tools, there are pros and cons. While the Audio, Video, and Picture sections are okay in terms of format support (though I personally miss some lossless audio codecs), the Document section is devoted to PDF conversion, mainly to text and Office formats. When it comes to ripping Blu-ray discs, for instance, MKV seems to be the only output option, while the DVD-to-file option offers a wider variety of output formats. You can rip audio and video from CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs, and even make ISO files out of them, but you won’t find an option to burn your media files back to disc, not to mention basic disc authoring capabilities.
On a more positive note, I have to admit that I’m impressed with the various extra tools and utilities that you can find scattered not only in the various media sections but hidden in the dialogs that open for each task. The program counts with an audio mixer, a video muxer, an ISO to CSO converter, access to Picosmos Picture Tools, tools to clip and crop video files, a screen recorder, a video downloader (which I couldn’t make work), basic image editing tools, a media compression utility, etc. And the best thing about Format Factory is that you don’t have to run each of these or any of its conversion tasks right away or one after the other – you can set them up, send them to the task list, and then execute all of them in one single operation.
As it usually happens with applications that try to look like the only tool for all your format transformations, Format Factory offers a bit of everything and a lot of nothing. It is certainly a useful tool that performs all its tasks efficiently, but without the level of sophistication that you may find in a high-end audio converter or in a tool designed specifically to rip video from a variety of discs. However, and given that the developers are providing us with a multi-purpose conversion tool for free, there is no harm in having it installed on our PC and have it handy for whenever the need arises.
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