XMedia Recode is a free audio and video converter for Windows. It reads most common media files, along with unprotected DVDs and Blu-ray discs, and re-encodes them into another container and codec. It can also filter picture and sound, manage tracks and subtitles, and set chapters. It is available as an installed program and as a portable version.
From source file to finished job
XMedia Recode organizes work as jobs in a queue. The user adds files with Open File. For a disc drive or a DVD or Blu-ray folder on the hard drive, the user selects Open Media. The user then selects the title to convert. The user chooses the target container on the Format tab. Each stream gets its settings on the Video, Audio and Subtitle tabs. After choosing an output folder, the user clicks Add to queue and then Encode. The user can queue and convert several files in one batch.
Instead of setting every value by hand, the user can start from a device profile. XMedia Recode includes presets for devices from manufacturers such as Apple, Samsung, Sony and Google, plus HTML5 targets for web video.
Containers and codecs
The program reads MP4, MKV, MOV, AVI, WMV, WebM, VOB and MPEG transport streams, M3U8 playlists, AviSynth scripts and audio files such as FLAC, DTS and WMA. Output containers include MP4, MKV, WebM, MPEG-TS, OGG and WAV.
For video, the encoders include H.264, HEVC/H.265, AV1 (both AOM and SVT-AV1), VP9, MPEG-2, Xvid and editing formats such as Apple ProRes and DNxHD. Audio encoders include AAC, AC3, MP3, Opus, Vorbis, FLAC, Apple Lossless and PCM.
Stream copy and track settings
Each stream has a mode: convert, which re-encodes it, or copy, which passes it into the new container unchanged. With copy mode, XMedia Recode can move an MKV’s video into an MP4 without re-encoding it. For a converted stream, the Video tab sets codec, frame rate, rate control mode, bitrate limits, GOP length and progressive or interlaced output. The Audio tab sets channels, sample rate and bitrate. Both tabs can import external streams, reorder tracks and label their language. They can also shift a track’s timing by a delay in milliseconds to fix sync.
GPU encoding
XMedia Recode can hand encoding work to the graphics hardware. Intel Quick Sync handles decoding and encoding of formats including H.264, HEVC, AV1 and VP9. Nvidia NVENC encodes H.264, HEVC and AV1, and CUDA handles decoding. AMD AMF encodes H.264 and HEVC.
Filters on the timeline
The Filter/Preview tab has separate Video Track and Audio Track sections. The user clicks Add Filter, picks one, and adjusts it on a timeline with a preview. An eye icon turns each filter on or off. The video filter list also includes Start Time and End Time entries.
Video filters cover cropping, padding, resizing, rotation, deinterlacing, denoising, colour correction, 3D LUTs, fades, clip speed and text overlays. Two filters handle on-screen marks:
- Watermark places an image at a set X/Y position and size for a chosen time range.
- Delogo covers a rectangle defined by position, width and height and fills it from the surrounding picture, to remove an existing logo.
Audio filters include volume correction for normalizing loudness, an 18-band equalizer, echo, tempo and fades. XMedia Recode can also extract audio from videos and discs into MP3 or M4A files and edit ID3 tags and cover art.
Subtitles and chapters
A converted file can carry up to 32 subtitle tracks. On the Subtitle tab the user imports external SRT, ASS or SUB files and adds them as streams. The user sets their language and chooses whether to copy embedded subtitles or convert them to another subtitle codec. Output codecs include SubRip, SSA and WebVTT. To make subtitles part of the picture itself, the subtitle rendering filter burns an SRT, SSA or ASS file into the video. Font, colours, outline style, margins and alignment are adjustable.
The Chapter Editor builds chapters from a name, start time and end time. It can also divide a video into chapters at a fixed interval, or import a text chapter file. XMedia Recode automatically imports chapters from DVD and Blu-ray sources.
