Converting .wmv to .mp4 for free, online

I had a .wmv Windows Movie File that I wanted to convert to the .mp4 so that a Java platform would play it with ease.  I have a bunch of video tools on my computer, so I decided to check them out first.

VLC Media player looked like it could do the job.  Using it was one of the most frustrating exercises that I have ever undertaken and it burned most of the day.

It looks easy enough.  You choose the Convert/Save menu item.  Then you open the file, put in the destination file, and choose what codecs you have.  That was the issue.  I chose the first one (some sort of video + MP3) and nothing happened.  No error message.  Nada.

I then clicked on that menu item and tried every single damn codec listed.  In some cases I got the audio but no video.  For most of the times, I clicked OK and nothing happened.

I finally got a movie out of one of the codecs, but it was incredibly poor quality with huge pixelation.  Another one gave me a good quality, but it consistently put in a bunch of junk (huge color blocks, pixels and bits of screen detritus) at the start.  I knew something was wrong, because in each effort, I never got a thumbnail of a still from the movie.

In frustration, I did a Google search for online .wmv to .mp4 converter.  The first one that popped up was www.online-convert.com.  I went to the site, selected my video and within a minute it was ready to download the .mp4.  The conversion was fast, and the result was spectacular.  There was a thumbnail of the very first frame.

These guys should have their blood preserved for posterity. Thanks guys.   (as usual, I was not paid to say this, nor did I receive any consideration at all).

Best PDF to Word Online Converter

I had this pdf from a few years ago.  I had lost the original MSWord document, and I wanted to change it.  I went online and Googled a pile of online services.  One asked me if I wanted to make my document public.  Not trusting them, I moved on.  Another accepted my document, and said that I was 5,500 in the queue and it went down by one every couple of minutes.  I cancelled that job.  I went to another one, and it sent me a conversion into my email box.  However it was just an image pasted into an MSWord document, and I couldn't edit it.

I came to the conclusion that I needed my PDF scanned with OCR or Optical Character Recognition.  The first one that came up in the search was www.scannedpdftoword.com .  Note:  This is not pdftoword.com which I didn't like.  It had the word "scanned" in the URL.

Bingo. This was it.  It promptly sent back an MSWord doc that I could edit.  They sell a desktop version as well.  I was totally pleased with the result.  There was a spelling error or two, but the error was consistent.  I would heartily recommend their product and services.  I was not paid for this product review, nor did I receive any inducement to make it.