Permute – Drag & Drop Media Conversion
I have the privilege to demo Permute, currently unreleased, an app for converting between a huge list of media types.
Permute, by Fuel Collective, are also the makers of other extremely well designed Mac apps like Snippet, Swatch and PunchClock.
Permute is a media conversion application that converts videos to other video format like AppleTV, iPhone, iPod Touch, FLV, PS3, XBox, MP4, DVD etc. Not only that, it will also convert the resulting video into the correct aspect ratio of the resulting format.
I have a similar app that I bought last year, Xilisoft Video Converter, that does the same thing and I never thought the same app can be re-designed to be so much easier to use, not until Permute came along.
User Interface
I’m sure you will agree with me how easy it is to use this app when you look at this user interface the moment you launch the app. Start dropping your video files to convert!
Drag & Drop
You can drop one, two or any number of files into the drop zone. This is the screen you will see next after dropping. From the drop down menu, choose a format you want to convert to.
List Of Formats
There is a huge list of formats you can convert your video to. Converting a video to an audio file is also possible. I find this very useful for me. Recently I’ve been to YouTube to search for Andrew Garcia’s acoustic covers (yes I support him on American Idol!), downloaded and converted the YouTube FLVs to audio formats so that I can listen to it on my iTunes.
Had I known this app earlier, I would have used it to do the same. I’m sure there will be opportunities for the same kind of task in future. :)
As you can see there is a pretty good list of formats, kudos to the developers for the amount of work done for this.
Settings
There are some very thoughtful settings like putting to your Mac to sleep after conversion. Meaning you can go to sleep resting assured that you’ll save some electricity.
You can also convert .dvdmedia / VIDEO_TS folders to ISO’s for better compatibility with media center software.
The individual settings for the different formats can also be tuned. How flexible!
Conclusion
What can I say? Fuel Collective has done it again.
The developers have released the last built before the official release, so lookout! Follow @FuelCollective for updates!
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Really hoping that they release a .WMV conversion in there at some point… I just bought iSkySoft Video Converter yesterday because I have a lot of clients on Windows who can’t view anything but WMVs. :/
Maybe you should give @fuelcollective a shout! :)
Hey James,
It might not make it for 1.0, but I’m sure there is a possibility of us adding it in a very near future.
Cheers,
Krystof
Looks great! Can’t help wondering what files will be able to be converted in the first place? I’ve been converting a lot of MKVs recently to be able to stream to my Xbox, but haven’t found the perfect way to do so yet.
I think the formats that you can convert to, are the formats that you can convert. Krystof – Correct me if I’m wrong.
Ah, didn’t think of that. That would make sense though! Maybe MKV is another thing that could be added in the future?
I’m sure Fuel Collective will consider these suggestions! :)
Permute will take in almost anything (except for DRM /encrypted/ files, of course), including MKV – all formats that it can convert to, it can convert from, but there’s a few formats Permute doesn’t convert to, yet can read (e.g. the aforementioned MKV).
Always had trouble converting video successfully. This looks like a real winner finally.
Gary Nolan