Convert windows movie maker's DV Type-1 to Type-2
I swap back and forth between Windows Movie Maker & Pinnacle Studio 8 for video editing depending on my editing needs and mood. Movie Maker is nice because it's on every machine I use, so I will often capture the video on one machine but edit it on another. One problem with this is that Movie Maker only outputs DV-AVI Type-1, which Pinnacle can't open. I finally found a decent piece of software today that A) does the conversion in a reasonable amount of time for multiple files at a time and B) doesn't have a horrendous UI.
When I purchase software from small companies or individual developers, if I have a choice between two pieces of software with the same functionality, I like to reward the developer who has taken more time with the user interface. I don't expect the level of UI you get from a company that can afford designers or someone with at least some user interface design education, but it's obvious when there has been some thought into the usability of the program, and I appreciate that.
Magic Video Batch Converter is the program in question. It passed my 30 second test of software - within 30 seconds of starting it, I had figured out how to use it to do exactly what I needed to do.
And best of all, the shareware prompt says they support paypal for purchasing the license ($24.95). That's worth it to me, so off I am to reward the authors of this nice little app.
[Updated later in the day: In my quest I also ran across this super handy app to do type-1 to type-2 conversion, which I found on this helpful page. It's also blindingly fast.]