Video is today more portable than ever. In this issue itself, we've reviewed two new video-playing categories of products that never used to play video earlier; a watch and a photo frame. With the multitude of portable entertainment devices we have, the video formats they all use are equally substantial in number. Xvid, DivX, Flash Video, VOB, Real Media, WMV, AVI, MPEG, MP4, ASF and QuickTime are some of the more popular formats. You can't just drag-and-drop any video you have to any portable device. It may have to be converted to a specific format that the player can understand and/or a specific size and framerate. Some players use proprietary formats for video, but they almost always come with their own video conveter too.

There is a long list of different software available that can help you convert videos from one format to another – or convert videos specifically for your portable device. These are some of your better options.

Mediacoder (Freeware open source) MediaCoder is an open source universal audio/video converter which puts together lots of excellent audio/video codecs and tools from the open source community into an all-in-one solution. It supports Xvid, DivX, Flash Video, AVI, MPEG, VOB, MP4, Real Media and WMV video formats http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/ Videora converter 2.0 (Freeware) Videora Converter is a free video conversion application that allows you to convert your video files into the video formats that your mobile or fixed video device understands, it supports AVI, MPEG, VOB, MP4 and WMV video formats.
www.videora.com Any Video Converter (Freeware) Any Video Converter is a professional video converter that can convert video files from various formats with fast converting speed and excellent video quality. It can convert almost all video formats including DivX, Xvid, MOV, real media, MPEG, VOB, DVD, WMV, AVI and MPEG-4. www.any-video-converter.com MediaCoder PSP Edition (Freeware, open source) The best part about this video converter is that it has the full support of MediaCoder application and in addition to that it has been optimized to give video output for PSP, it can Encode all known video formats to PSP SP Format, PSP AVC Format and PMP AVC Format and with this you can also automatically transfer converted files to connected PSP.
http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/device/psp.htm HandBrake(Freeware, open source) HandBrake is a multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows, it can convert any DVD, DVD image or real DVD (encrypted or unencrypted, but protection methods other than CSS are not supported), and VOB files, and convert them to MP4, MKV, AVI or OGM formats for portable media players.
http://handbrake.m0k.org Videora iPod Converter (Freeware, open source) Videora iPod Converter is a free iPod video converter that converts your video files, You Tube videos, movies and DVD's into iPod recognizable format so you can play them on your iPod. With Videora iPod Converter you can convert videos for any type of  iPod that plays video, this includes the new iPod touch, iPod nano and iPod classic. http://www.videora.com/en-us/Converter/iPod/ Zune Video Converter (Freeware)A wonderful and useful piece of software if you've got Microsoft's populat PMP. It can convert DVD, VOB, DivX, MPEG, Xvid, MOV, RM, ASF, VCD, MPG, MP4, RMVB, You tube, FLV, WMV, and AVI formats to the Zune video format. www.zunevideoconverter.com PSP Video 9 (Freeware) PSP Video 9 is a free PSP video conversion and management application that can convert various popular video files like AVI, MPEG, MP4, ASF/WMV to PSP video files. The software can also manage/copy these PSP video files between your PC and PSP with one-click simplicity. www.pspvideo9.com

Xilisoft Video Converter 3.1 (US$ 35) Xilisoft Video Converter is powerful and versatile video conversion software that has a very easy to use interface. It supports conversion between a long range of video formats like DVD, VCD, SVCD, AVI, MPEG, MP4, WMV, 3GP, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, H.264/PSP AVC Video, MOV, RM, ASF, FLV and SWF Also in addition to these various device specific softwares, these softwares convert your video and give the output specific to your device. www.xilisoft.com

Total Video Converter 3.11 (US$ 40.95) Total Video Converter is a total solution for video conversion which supports lots of video formats like MPEG, VOB, MP4, Real Media MPEG, VOB, MP4, Real Media, 3gp, swf, flv, DVD, VCD and WMV and supports converting them to popular video formats. Total Video Converter includes a powerful media conversion engine and has all the codecs built in internally so that you can convert media files to all the known formats with very fast speed. www.effectmatrix.com