WinFF Converter FFmpeg GUI [How To Install & Use In Ubuntu Linux Or Derivatives]

FFmpeg is the command line, cross-platform tool to record, convert, compress and stream audio/video files. Although the command line is easier to use for experience users but for new it's iron ball to chewing. Why not use GUI for FFmpeg? WinFF. WinFF is a GUI tool to convert and compress each file that FFmpeg can convert.

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We often need to convert/compress audio or videos files to play on some small screen devices. Sometimes you pay for a movie but later on you find your smarphone is missing codecs for that and so not playing. You can easily convert any video with WinFF in any format you want. Let's see how to install and use it.

Install WinFF 

Installing WinFF is pretty easy. Simply add the following ppa and update local repositories and install WinFF.

Most Linux distros have WinFF in their default repositories, so first try to install without adding PPA.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:paul-climbing/ppa

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get install winff

(Optional) Install the unstripped version of ffmpeg:

$ sudo apt-get install libavcodec-extra-53

How To Use WinFF

Once installation finishes, launch WinFF from menu. WinFF has very simple and easy to use interface.

Add File To Convert: WinFF

First set the format you want the file to convert into. There are many preset also that you can choose from. For example, I want to upload video to web, so I selected Website and preset to be 'Flash: Video (flv) for web use Widescreen'. There are many presets listed. You can choose any of your desire. 

Select the output folder where converted file will be saved.

There is even more. See the button in top right? 'Options'. Click it. And there is even more you can do with your file. You can specify Video/audio bitrate, Frame rate, Video size, Volume and even crop the video. Do you as you need. 

Once you have done setting up your conversion. Click 'Convert' button from menu and the conversion will start in terminal. 

When the conversion is completed, terminal will prompt to press enter to continue. Press enter and done! You can now browse the folder where you saved converted file. Enjoy!

WinFF is very easy to use with so many preset or format. You must give it a try if you regularly do file conversion. If you are using any other file converter or FFmpeg GUI tool then please share it with us in the comment below.