If you are a movie lover like me, you probably have had reasons to download movies from open-source platforms. The reason for this can be personal, but in my case, the movies are either not available on my paid streaming platforms or I may just need to set up another streaming app to access the movie. If you are like me, you would agree that it’s such a hectic task. The solution? For me, I just check for an open-source platform to download the movie, but even at that, this method is not completely hitch-free.
I’ve downloaded my fair share of videos from the internet, so imagine my surprise when one day, I downloaded one and couldn’t play it on my local video player. After a few minutes of trying to figure out what the problem could be, I realized it was because they were formatted in AVCHD, a video format commonly used for recording HD video on today’s digital cameras. This video format typically uses the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 codec for video compression, which results in great video quality and a relatively small file size.
However, AVCHD isn’t widely supported across video playing software, which is why I encountered the aforementioned challenge, and was advised by the internet to convert to MP4. Out of curiosity, I explored every MP4 converter I could find, from free classics like VLC to pro tools like HandBrake, and quick online converters like Movavi Video Converter. In this guide, I’ll walk you through a list of apps that make converting AVCHD to MP4 easy, explain why I picked each one, and highlight what each tool does better than the rest.