StaxRip

Here is what you can do with StaxRip: you can take just about any source format you can think of (videos, DVDs, DVB captures and so on) and you can convert it to MPEG-4 (DivX, x264, Xvid, and more). Access to this sort of functionality is done via a very simple interface. Moreover, access to this functionality is provided free of charge.

To get started with StaxRip you will not have to go through any installation process. What you have to do is download a 7z archive (close to 32MB in size), extract its contents, and run the StaxRip executable. Once you do so you will be presented with the application’s interface and you will thus be able to access the functionality it has to offer.

The first thing you will see is a Getting Started prompt that will invite you to choose a template (DivX Plus, iPad, iPhone, PS3, WebM, x264, Xbox 360, Xvid) and select an encoding mode (quality or file size). Then you will be presented with StaxRip’s UI which, as mentioned above, is a very simple interface. Even if you’re not the most experienced computer use, you won’t have any problems with it.

You can take source files and convert them – either one at a time or batch convert multiple files at once. You can also merge source files together and you can use filters: field, crop, noise, resize.

Released under a GNU General Public License, StaxRip is a free and open-source application.

The bottom line is that StaxRip is free and open source, it’s quite easy to use, and it works as advertised.