the greatest fastest video converter i know of is free
it's so minimal which i think allows it to run so smooth
it's on CNET and it's called internet video converter
http://www.download.com/Internet-Video- ... ?tag=lst-1
they even improved the only tiny annoy thing it had
i get the best results from it, it's awesome. i've tried a lot of em
the only format it doesn't do is rm
but there is another free one that does it
http://www.download.com/Any-Video-Conve ... ?tag=lst-6
it works good for changing rm but otherwise it's a lil more effort and the results varied
so i would only use this for converting rm, though i imagine there is better alternatives
get firebug for firefox
you can take youtube videos, you just have to rename the "getvideo" name and add .flv
i mean you can keep get video, you just have to add on the flv
youtube is flv but they made it so you download that getvideo file with no extension
other sites you'll probably just get it in flv or some other format
like stage6, you get as divx, niccce
then you can convert with the first one
it'll convert to ipod format too, i've done entire movies very fast
i know nothing about video specs but i know how to convert them to anything, haha