15-Minute Reviews :: AVI Toolbox v1.6.1.25

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is AVI Toolbox version 1.6.1.25 by KC Softwares – An AVI-manipulation application.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“AVI Toolbox is a userfriendly toolbox for common video files operations such as video splitting, audio extraction, picture capture and much more.”

Quick Pros

• Interface dead-simple
• Features include split/trim, extract audio, extract picture, burn to CD and burn to DVD
• Finite control found in menu only
• Process is fast

Quick Cons

• Split/trim is actually only trimming; Doesn’t result in two files
• When I went to test the ‘Copy to DVD’ or ‘Burn to CD’, I get directed to get another piece of software
• First video it flipped upside down on split; Second wouldn’t preview properly
• Accidentally made it crash by not setting an End point
• There isn’t ‘Much More’

Expansion

With a little experience in video editing off-and-on, I went into this application review hoping for another tool to add to my personal toolbox.

The application’s interface is very simple and clean, and is very easy to use, mostly because of the featureset. The application features an AVI-only featureset with trimming (They call it split/trim, but doesn’t actually ‘split’ a file), pulling off the audio track from the file, as well as taking a video snapshot of the video. The audio track ripping seemed to work fine both tests I ran; The video screenshot function seemed to work as well.

The application also has ‘Burn to CD’ and ‘Copy to DVD’ features, but I get directed to download another software title called CopyToDVD when I click on ‘Burn to CD’. When you click on Yes, you are directed to VSO Software’s main site, which coincidently the link appears to have an affiliate tag attached. Similarily, when I click on ‘Copy to DVD’, it tells me I have to get a third-party application from VSO Software (same company as CopyToDVD) to do so. It doesn’t state which application I need – I would hope CopyToDVD but honestly, it doesn’t say and I don’t know. It would have helped if the link took you to the product page instead of the main site, again with an affiliate tag attached. EDIT: Looking on this title’s website, you need two applications to support these ‘features’; CopyToDVD and ConvertXToDVD – $69.98 worth of software.

My testing of the trimming functionality didn’t go great however. While there is finite control over frames through the menu, it would have been nice to have keyboard shortcuts for these, buttons on the front page, as well as maybe a time-based or frame-based input control. My issues started on my first trim. I trimmed up a short section of AVI I created from a previous review – It is a DivX codec. The resulting file came out trimmed, but it also came out upside down as well.

I moved onto a second file I had on hand was an XVID; I went to try to select my beginning, and found that past the first few seconds, the preview window showed complete black. Still I marked (blindly) a beginning and an end and hit Save. The trimming worked and didn’t come out as straight black, but it would have been nice if I could have seen what I was trimming.

While I was messing around, trying to make different things work, I was trying to see if you forced splitting to work by just marking a beginning or end marker by itself (Since there is no helpfile findable – Shouldn’t need one it’s so simple, but still should have one) and ended up crashing the application with leaving a beginning marker by itself.

I usually leave this kind of comment for the final verdict, but I wanted to mention it here since it is a bit longer. The description on Giveaway as well as the author’s website denotes that there is ‘Much more’ – There is not much more. The functional (or semi-functional) features here are trimming, audio extraction, and extracting a picture. There is two links to two other features which bring you to another website which happens to have an affiliate tag – If you download the app(s) it suggests, I don’t know if having this application and using it in conjunction with the other application will even do anything besides generate the author a couple dollars for a referral.

Final Verdict

While the picture capture and audio ripping seems to work, the ‘trim’ function does not seem to work well or been hammered through for common issues. All-in-all I am all-around unimpressed by this application. At this point in its development cycle, it is not worth a free download, let alone spending $14.99 on three actual features (Sorry, international support isn’t a feature, it is support so others can use it), which one of these features appear to be quite broken. I tend to really dislike applications that try to sell a feature that they don’t actually have and require another pay-for title to support it (Such as in this case the Burn to CD/Copy to DVD combination) and even worse when there is what appears to be an affiliate tag attached to the referred applications.

For an alternative, I’ve used VirtualDub (GPL licence) for most of my needs when it comes to video files and these kind of chores. It isn’t as easy to use as this title (clearly) but packs some serious punch. I’m sure there are plenty of other great applications out there as well.

Posted by BladedThoth on Thursday, August 23, 2007