About Jeffrey MinceyAs a Mac, Windows, and Linux system administrator in Atlanta, Georgia, I've used Macs for over 20 years (mostly late at night). Check out my Mac tips, tricks, and app reviews at Bohemian Boomer.
Mac360's Comment Policy: Keep your comment on topic, relevant, worthy, and funny. Or, pick any three. Be pleasant, helpful, and only use your real name. Comments are moderated and will not appear immediately.
Righting A Wrong: VisualHub Is A Good Buy.
Once in awhile, in our quest for great Mac values, we poke at a utility or application.
In one case recently, we poked and should have picked instead.
My favorite value vixen at Mac360 is Alexis Kayhill. The lady knows bargains, values, and useful utilities.
Just weeks ago Alexis gave a quick and positive review of the popular iSquint video converter for Mac OS X.
It’s hard to beat a Mac utility that does so much, so well, and for so little cost. As in free. Alexis always finds the bargains.
In this case, she passed up another bargain while grumbling about the potential “bait and switch” issue.
While showing genuine affection for Techspansion’s iSquint, the companion product, VisualHub, got poked for having a price tag.
iSquint is free and converts videos to fit the iPod. VisualHub converts even more video formats but costs almost $24.
Alexis smelled a “bait and switch” and said so. After using and reviewing both iSquint and VisualHub, we’re about to change an opinion.
Why? Because reason and intelligence should allow us to change our minds.
And, because I used VisualHub, loved it, bought it, and told Alexis to Think Different and dig deeper.
Not everyone has a need to convert nearly every video format known to Mac users, so iSquint will work fine.
If it doesn’t do what you want, I recommend a visit to VisualHub, because it’s handled nearly everything I’ve thrown at it in a week of use.
Converting videos to other formats could not be easier unless Techspansion came to your house. Click, drag file, click.
All the basic QuickTime Pro formats are supported, even some that are not such as converting to PSP and TiVo.
The Advanced Panel is for the geekier among us and seems to cover every modifcation possible for encoding.
Oh, encoding. That’s when we click a button and find something else to do for an hour. VisualHub’s Dynamic Preview lets you see what will happen before click and beginning a long encoding session.
Even better is the ability to batch files. Drag videos into VisualHub, click the settings, go to bed, and wake up to multiple video conversions done the easy way.
I have enough Macs here at work that I’m tempted to try the Xgrid feature which will use the power of many Macs on a network for batch encoding.
All of us agree that Alexis does a great job of digging up valuable Mac utilities. She didn’t really miss VisualHub as she was turned off by a limited feature free version and a price tag on the multi-featured big brother.
That’s not bait and switch. It’s probably good will, good marketing, and good value. VisualHub is worth a few bills. It’s Mac simple, and just works.
Do you convert video files? What Mac utility do you use the most? What do you use to convert DVDs to movies on your Mac?
What? Me? Follow?
Finally, have you visited our sponsor overlords? When you do our pre-schoolers can stop hanging around 7-11 begging for food. Did you know our daily reviews, news, updates, and nonsense come right to you when you Follow Mac360 on Twitter? They do. Now you know.