First Look: VideoProc Converter from Digiarty Software

[ Read my product disclosure statement here.]

Digiarty Software’s VideoProc Converter was first released five years ago. It is a video processing toolkit. While optimized for Windows, the Mac version has a variety of features that make it worth adding to your toolset. However, it has issues you should consider before buying.

Recently, the folks at Digiarty sent me version 6.1 to review. Here’s what I learned.

NOTE: The Mac version does not include the AI features currently available in Windows. Digiarty tells me they are adding these to the Mac version early next year.

Product: VideoProc
Developer: Digiarty Software
Website: https://www.videoproc.com
Price: $49.95 (purchase) – #25.95 (annual subscription)
A free trial is available.

BACKGROUND

Digiarty Software, based in Chengdu, China, was founded in 2006. Its first release was a DVD authoring tool for Windows. VideoProc Converter is its current leading product with over 4.6 million users worldwide.

While the software provides simple clip editing tools, with an emphasis on trimming and effects, its benefits to professional editors lie in its other utilities:

• Support for up to 4K 60 fps media
• It converts 370+ input formats into 420+ output formats
• Batch download videos, playlists, or channels from over 3,000 websites
• Record the computer screen or webcam, including picture-in-picture and green screen removal.

AI features that are currently in the Windows version and coming to the Mac include:

• Up-res lower-quality videos up to 4K and still images up to 10K.
• Convert frame rates as well as provide smooth slow-motion up to 480 fps
• Video stabilization to minimize camera shake

NOTE: Digiarty makes a big deal of its hardware-acceleration support. While principally focused on Windows, VideoProc supports all Intel and M-series Macs. It also supports all Mac operating systems from Snow Leopard onward; which, in itself, is amazing. However, it does not appear to fully support M-series hardware media engines.

It was easier to take this screen shot than type all the different supported formats.

Output codecs include all popular formats:

• ProRes
• H.264
• HEVC
• DivX
• MKV
• OGV
• MPEG 1, 2 and 4
• WMV2
• And many, many others

VIDEO EDITING

Though Digiarty promotes VideoProc Converter as a video editor, it’s really a clip editor and media converter There’s no timeline, no multiple audio tracks, no audio mixing, no multicam, no transitions… it simply tweaks clips.

VideoProc Converter is much more closely related to the features of Handbrake than Premiere, which helps to better understand what it does.

NOTE: However, Digarty tells me they have a separate, free application specifically for video editing: VideoProc Vlogger.

VIDEO CONVERSION

If you’ve ever wanted to convert a media file from one format to another, this app has you covered. Supporting hundreds of different formats this will take anything and convert it into something else.

NOTE: Keep in mind that recompressing an already compressed file generally leads to a degradation in video quality. Wherever possible, always compress from a high-quality master.

I’m using a M2 Max Mac Studio for these tests. When you start the app, this screen appears.

• Drag the clip you want to adjust into the center panel
• Formats are applied by clicking icons on the bottom
• Settings are adjusted from the panel on the right

VideoProc Converter can process multiple clips at once (batch processing) but all clips in the same batch must be encoded using the same codec. In other words, you can’t apply multiple codecs to the same clip, nor can different clips in the same batch output to different codecs.

Here’s what the interface looks like after you drag in a clip. You can add as many different clips to this batch as you want.

Click Target Format, on the main screen, to choose the compression setting you want from dozens, perhaps hundreds, of presets.

In the right-side panel of the main screen, click Options to see what hardware this software supports.

NOTE: Notice that I clicked the High Quality Engine checkbox? We’ll come back to this in a minute.

Here, the first of several problems appears. Though all Apple silicon systems support hardware-accelerated H.264, HEVC and ProRes media encoding using the hardware Media Engine, VideoProc does not seem to use it. Instead, it uses the GPUs. This maybe why it is saying that HEVC compression is not hardware accelerated.

NOTE: However, as you will see shortly, the compression settings applied to a clip seem to indicate that hardware acceleration is supported. There’s a disconnect here.

Click the OPT button (right red arrow) to reveal compression options for each clip.

NOTE: Although the master clip is 3840 x 2160 (specs shown on the left), the compression defaults to 1920 x 1080 (left red arrow.)

More problems.

VideoProc does not accurately read the frame size or frame rate of the source clip. I dragged in a 4K (3840 x 2160) 29.97 fps clip. However, it defaults to 1920 x 1080 at 30 fps. For inexperienced users – which is the market for this software – this guarantees they won’t be happy with the results.

You can change frame size and frame rate in this menu, but you can’t change the compression codec. That must be done from the tray at the bottom of the main screen before entering the options window. Keep in mind that the same codec is applied to all clips.

As well, even though the High Quality Engine checkbox was checked, the quality compression slider is set to half-way between Low Quality and High Quality. This setting is not what I would expect with the High Quality Engine checkbox checked.

Looking at the tools attached to each clip, we can perform a lot of modifications – cut, crop, subtitle, add effects, rotate and watermark – but only on a clip-by-clip basis.

Everything in VideoProc Converter is clip-based.

SPEED TESTS

For a professional editor, the key reason to consider VideoPro Converter is to encode video clips into a format that your current compression software doesn’t support. So, I did some speed tests.

NOTE: Clearly, VideoProc Converter supports media formats not supported by Compressor or AME. This is one of the key reasons to buy it. However, to compare overall performance, I picked two codecs supported by all Mac compression software: H.264 and HEVC.

First, I compared the H.264 compression speeds of VideoProc Converter to Handbrake, Apple Compressor and Adobe Media Encoder. In all cases, the source file was ProRes 422 at 29.97 fps. I tested two clips: one 33 seconds long and the other 1:03.

• VideoProc Converter consistently outperformed Handbrake
• VideoProc Converter was fastest when converting 4K ProRes to 4K H.264
• It took all apps about twice as long to resize and convert 4K down to 1080p.

Still, VideoProc Converter essentially matched the speeds of Compressor and AME for H.264 compression.

However, when it came to HEVC, VideoProc Converter was woefully slow. Where Compressor and AME were measured in seconds, VideoProc was measured in minutes.

This test used the same two files, but substituted 10-bit HEVC for H.264. The first test converted 4K into 4K, the second test converted 4K into 1080p HD.

NOTE: It is worth special mention that Adobe Media Encoder consistently beat Compressor for HEVC encoding. Adobe’s engineers have worked hard to achieve this speed.

For those numerically inclined, here are the results for all 32 of my tests.

WHAT STILL NEEDS TO BE DONE

The Mac version of this software feels like it is not getting careful attention from Digiarty. For example:

• Digiarty needs to figure out how to take advantage of built-in HEVC hardware acceleration for both Intel and Apple silicon Macs
• Default settings should match the frame size and frame rate of each imported clip
• It needs to add support for the hardware media engine(s) in Apple silicon
• It needs to support applying different codecs within the same batch
• It needs to support applying multiple compression settings to the same clip
• The User Manual is extremely simplistic. Designed for people with no compression background, there does not seem to be a description of how to changes settings, what key settings do or ways to optimize compression.
• It needs to add simple “Tool Tips” to more checkboxes. I still have no idea what “Expand Video” does.
• It needs to provide better guidance on what the compression settings mean and what they adjust. Video compression is arcane enough – without significant help adjusting settings is simply an exercise in blind tweaking.
• The screen recorder needs to add the option to record using ProRes 4444. It defaults to H.264, which causes color shifts and reduced color saturation.

NOTE: ProRes 4444 exactly matches the colors and bit depth displayed by a computer monitor. No other codec does so.

I only briefly tested the screen recording capability. Once I saw that it only recorded using H.264, I didn’t test further. H.264 is too low a quality. However, for those that don’t want to pay the high cost of Telestream ScreenFlow and are looking for a low-cost alternative, this could be an excellent option provided high color fidelity is not essential.

I did not test its video download capability.

SUMMARY

VideoProc Converter is a highly-affordable media clip compression and adjustment software. While most of its clip manipulation and trimming features already exist in professional video editing software, its support for transcoding virtually all known video formats makes it an attractive addition to your toolkit.

This may also be a valuable addition to your toolkit simply for the screen recording. Yes, you can record the screen using QuickTime Player, but you can’t select audio inputs. VideoProc Converter is more capable. Adding ProRes 4444 support would make it highly desirable.

It will be even more attractive once Digiarty fixes some of the problems with the Mac version and adds the same AI enhancements that exist for the Windows version.

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