Without a doubt, there has been a moment where you thought, “Man, I wish I could convert this .avi to a .mpg!” or something along those lines.  I know I have thought that millions of times.  It sucks. I have tried to find software to do the job, but at the end of the day, all I end up with is a mess of 30 day or 50% conversion trials.  There are very few freeware applications that convert video or other files out there.

Zamzar is an amazing web-based conversion utility. It lets you convert images, video, audio, or documents to different formats (e.g. doc to pdf, or mp3 to wav). The service is super-easy to use, all you have to do is enter the path to the file you would like to convert, the output type and your email address and you’re good to go.

When the file is converted, they will send you a link to download the converted file.  There is a 100mb limit on the files you can convert but that is more than enough for most people.  A recently added feature to Zamzar is a tool that allows you to download and convert videos from online services such as YouTube.