I do not very frequently work with video, but occasionally enough that it's a headache at times. I have a custom lobby monitor software program I created for a client, which displays videos, text information, and graphical promotions to clients waiting in their lobby on multiple high-def monitors they had installed. Rather than pay premium prices for the hardware, and then somewhat excessive monthly subscription fees for ongoing service for similar systems, they selected their own hardware, had a local A/V provider get the audio and video hooked up, and had me write software to operate the system. They ended up paying about the same up-front overall, but are saving considerable fees monthly.
Of course, it's important to keep the content fresh, and the videos are especially an issue, due to the greater effort to create such content. They use television commercials they have had produced, videos available to them from trade associations and partners, and other content they find online which is appropriate for their customers, and for which they have (or can get) appropriate permission.
The Problem
The system I created for them is capable of playing a great many formats using the DivX codecs. It can even take the .vob files directly from a DVD and use those for playback, but those are typically fairly large files, and it would be easier to work with them after being converted to, say, a more approrpriately-sized WMV. There are also some formats that can't be played with what we've got, and I would rather not introduce extra complexity to the system itself to try to get them to work.
What I needed, then, was something that could convert videos from pretty much any format out there, to any of a few specific formats that are best used on the system. It needed to be something simple enough that the client could use it, if need be... but even I need something simple and to-the-point, so as not to waste time trying to remember which options and settings and etc. to have to use every time I needed to convert one MOV file for them. I'd had lots of trouble in the past with the output videos not being playable, and I could never figure out if it was a problem with the converter being used, the computer, or just stupid settings on my part.
The Solution
So I finally found a solution that seems to work for all of my needs; WinFF is a free (as in 'beer' and 'speech') GUI for the command-line FFMPEG conversion software, which it includes as a compiled program as well. It allows you to specify any number of input video files (which can be of various formats/file types), and allows you to specify a pre-set output format and options, or to fine-tune the settings you need, if you know what you are doing (I don't!). Tell it where you want output to go, and set it loose; a command-prompt window opens and you are shown the progress from FFMPEG as it converts the files.
I have had no trouble with conversions performed with WinFF/FFMPEG as of yet. In particular, the large MOV and VOB files that had caused me trouble with other converters worked like a charm.
There are downloads available for Windows and Debian, Ubuntu and Red Hat-based Linux distributions, as well as source code.