Roxio to announce Crunch, a new video conversion app
Looks like VisualHub and iSquint are going to have some competition on their hands, as Roxio on Monday will announce Crunch, their own entry into the software video conversion market. With computer-based video leaving the nest for devices like the Apple TV, the iPod and soon the iPhone, tools that can easily convert video from a plethora of sources and formats are becoming ever the more useful. Roxio looks to make a decent splash in the market with Crunch, as it features their typical UI (which, personally, I detest) and a nice array of features, including batch encoding of multiple files, conversion of DVDs created with Toast, iMovie, and other video editing apps (in other words: it won't rip and encode commercial DVDs), support for a very wide array of video formats including the elusive MPEG-1, presets for specific devices and one killer and rare feature you don't see in many (if any) other apps: encoding from VIDEO_TS files that are ripped straight from a DVD.
Still, all this comes at a price: Crunch will cost $50, whereas similar solutions that don't do DVD or VIDEO_TS conversion, like VisualHub, can be had for half that. Still, we'll have to reserve a final judgment until we can get our hands on a copy. Until then, check out our gallery of Crunch screenshots to get a better perspective on whether you should try out a demo.
[Correction: VisualHub does convert VIDEO_TS folders as of version 1.1; our apologies.]
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