
Ok, so VLC is a media
player, not converter, but if you're watching
digital video, it's a must-have—plus
VLC can indeed rip DVD's, as well as
play ripped discs
in ISO format (no actual optical media required.) VLC can also play FLV
files downloaded from YouTube et al, no conversion to AVI required.
Since there's a
portable version, VLC's a nice choice for getting your DVD rips/saved YouTube video watching on wherever you go.
9. MediaCoder (Open source/Windows)
Batch
convert audio and video compression formats with the open source Media
Coder for Windows, which works with a long laundry lists of formats,
including MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, AAC+, AAC+V2, MusePack, WMA, RealAudio,
AVI, MPEG/VOB, Matroska, MP4, RealMedia, ASF/WMV, Quicktime, and OGM, to
name a few.
8. Avi2Dvd (Freeware/Windows)

Make
your video files burnable to a DVD with Avi2Dvd, a utility that
converts Avi/Ogm/Mkv/Wmv/Dvd files to Dvd/Svcd/Vcd format. Avi2Dvd can
also produce DVD menus with chapter, audio, and subtitle buttons.

Videora Converter is a set of programs, each designed to convert
regular PC video files into a format tailored to your favorite
video-playing handheld device. The Videora program list includes
iPod Video Converter (for 5th gen iPods),
iPod classic Video Converter (for 6th gen classic iPods),
iPod nano Video Converter (for 3rd gen iPod nanos),
iPod touch Video Converter,
iPhone Video Converter,
Videora Apple TV Converter,
PSP Video 9,
Videora Xbox360 Converter,
Videora TiVo Converter, and
Videora PMP Converter. Lifehacker alum Rick Broida used
Videora in conjunction with DVD Decrypter to copy DVDs to his iPod.
Honorable Mention:
Ares Tube for Windows converts YouTube and other online videos to iPod format.

Convert almost all video formats including DivX, XviD, MOV, rm, rmvb,
MPEG, VOB, DVD, WMV, AVI to MPEG-4 movie format for iPod/PSP or other
portable video device, MP4 player or smart phone with Any Video
Converter, which also supports user-defined video file formats as the
output. Batch process multiple files that AVC saves to a pre-selected
directory folder, leaving the original files untouched.
Web application
Hey!Watch converts video
located on your computer desktop as well as clips hosted on video
sites. Upload your video to Hey!Watch to encode it into a wide variety
of file formats, like H264, MP4, WMV, DivX, HD Video, Mobile 3GP/MP4,
iPod, Archos and PSP. Hey!Watch only allows for 10MB of video uploads
per month for free, and from there you pay for what you use, but it's
got lots of neat features for video publishers like podcast feed
generation and automatic batch processing with options you set once.
When
you don't want to mess with installing software to grab that priceless
YouTube clip before it gets yanked, head over to web site
VidDownloader
which sucks in videos from all the big streaming sites (YouTube, Google
Video, iFilm, Blip.TV, DailyMotion, etc.), converts 'em for you to a
playable format and offers them for download. Other downloaders for
online video sites buy you a Flash FLV file, but VidDownloader spits
back an AVI file.
3. iSquint (Freeware/Mac OS X only)
Convert any video file to iPod-sized versions and automatically add the
results to your iTunes library. iSquint is free, but Lifehacker readers
have praised the pay-for iSquint upgrade,
VisualHub, which offers more advanced options for a $23 license fee. Check out the
feature comparison chart between iSquint and VisualHub.
2. DVD Shrink (Freeware/Windows only)
Copy a DVD to your hard drive and leave off all the extras like bonus footage, trailers and other extras to save space with DVD Shrink.
Download Adam's one-click AutoHotkey/DVD Shrink utility to rip your DVDs to your hard drive for skip-free video play from scratchy optical media.
Honorable mention:
DVD Decrypter (beware of advertisement interstitial page), which Windows peeps can use to
copy DVDs to their iPods.
1. Handbrake (Open source/Windows, Mac)
Back up your DVD's to digital file with this open source DVD to MPEG-4 converter app. See also
how to rip DVDs to your iPod with Handbrake.
What's your favorite way to convert video to the right format? Did we
miss any good ones in this list? Let us know in the comments.