"Bill in Co" wrote

| There don't seem to be any listings or reviews of their programs that I've
| found (but I only looked briefly), nor have I found out much of anything
| about this "videotool.net" company, or even where it is based. If you
want
| to be suspicious of something, I think this is a case in point.
|

Yes. That's as I described in my own experience.
But I tried it. I monitored for any suspicious activity.
It's one of the few that never tried to call home at all.
And it works.

| just that you (generally) get what you pay for.

?? Was anyone talking about being willing to
pay for this? The question was about "good free".

I also don't think that's necessarily true when it
comes to software. There are lots of factors. Many
good products are free because there's just no
market for selling them. Most of the software I use
is free. And I also use it because it's usually the best
I've found. I've paid for some that I think is worth it.
But with most things there's no need to pay.

At the other extreme are the corporate monopoly
products -- MS Office and Photoshop. In that case
you get less than you pay for, since equivalents can
be had far cheaper.

Then there are things that are not the best but are
good enough. Example: PDF XChange Viewer free version
can edit PDFs. It's not as capable as Acrobat, but it does
what I need and Acrobat is ridiculously overpriced.

There used to be a popular editor for VBScript that
was $175, and that was maybe 15 years ago. Crazy
expensive. It was popular because they marketed,
seemed to have partnered with Microsoft, and got
classes to require that students buy it. Clever marketing.
But it wasn't much different from Notepad++. They
just got the right people to keep repeating that it was
the Cadillac of editors and all the sheep decided it
must be worth $175. Because people rarely actually
think for themselves.

We could go on all day coming up with examples like that.
Why do people pay $2 for a bottle of tap water that's
not even as good as what comes from their sink and
probably has nano-plastic contamination? In fact,
it may very well be the same water as from their sink,
if they're lucky. There's no regulation. Are they
getting what they pay for? No. They're paying $2 and
getting essentially nothing. They're getting what
lots of other people told them is a good thing to buy.
Then they throw away the bottle, creating unnecessary
pollution while also requiring that they pay $2 again
next time they want a drink of water. Selling water
that nobody needs, and making an environmental mess
doing it, is a multi-billion dollar industry. Yet the
intelligentsia discuss whether Dasani or Poland Springs
is better.

Then they go to the gym to pay for the
right to walk, dressing in $200 worth of official
exercise clothing. Because you can't just wear any
old thing if you want to do official walking. And they
buy a power bar to improve
their health, which is actually just sugar, maybe
hydrogenated fats, stale oats, and whatever rancid
vegetable oil fell off a truck this week. ("Safflower
and/or coconut and/or palm kernel....") But they
saw it on TV and the package says "Natural!... Power..."
and something about Omega-3. So they buy it.
Probably for 4 bucks.

Did you ever see the video from Jimmy Kimmel
of people outside a gym in LA being asked about
gluten? Very funny and very telling...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdJFE1sp4Fw

| Also, from the posting Arlen gave, you'll notice it's using an old mp4
| codec, and not the h.264 version.

I don't see Arlen's posts and I don't really
understand what that means. Smaller files? The
Videotool people seem to have written their own
stuff, but I don't know anything about video
programming, so I can't assess it. What's superior
about h.264 and what's the old version?

| Maybe somebody can
| investigate a few of their programs further.

Like you, perhaps? If everyone tries some
of them, we get a good sample.

It looks to me like Videotools is a small, non-US
shareware company. Probably non-English, as Paul
noted. But that doesn't make them suspicious.
The software works. I should note, though, that I'm
not picky in this case. I haven't looked into options
with any of this software in terms of resolution,
FPS, etc. If I use it, it will only be to do something
like send an instruction video to a friend trying to
set up email. Compression is probably the most
important factor to me.