A GStreamer based Video Transcoder - Transmageddon

So, after trying out winff, the graphical frontend for ffmpeg, I kept looking for more such tools and found  the "Transmageddon Transcoder". Perhaps the name was inspired from Armageddon . Anyway, unlike winff which uses FFmpeg at the backend, this tool is based upon GStreamer framework and is only a video transcoder.

GStreamer is a pipeline-based multimedia framework which provides an interface to programmers for writing various multimedia applications.

Transmageddon was made keeping in mind a regular user needs who just wants to play video on his mobile devices, doesn't really care about formats or codecs. So, it comes with a bunch of presets for converting videos to formats compatible with various mobile devices.

Transmageddon is not all about presets. You can always go for simple format->format conversion aided with manual selection of codecs. Just use "No preset" while doing this.

It even provides various options to rotate/flip the output video.

The project's homepage clearly states that this is tool is under-development so you might face some trouble. It makes use of the most cutting edge libraries so, installing latest versions is not easy.

While Transmageddon converts almost any format into the one's listed for output, I actually ran into some issue while trying to convert a flv and a mp4 video to 3gpp format. It prompted me to check the availibility of a codec/plugin named "Quicktime Muxer" to make the conversion possible. But unfortunately, it was not available, so nothing happened :(. Well, I don't think its even an issue with the app, its just the unavailability of a codec due to licensing issues.

By the way, I am using Version 0.15, the default in Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx. The latest being 0.16, released this May, which adds WebM support.

If you are having some kind of trouble with it or can't install a decent version because of dependency issues then go for another GStreamer based transcoder, Arista.