5 Free File Converter Software and Online Services

Free tools to convert video, audio, images, and more

Sometimes, you find yourself with a file in a format that no program on your computer supports. When this happens, you usually have two options: You can purchase the program that opens the file, or you can use free file converter software to convert the file to a format that some program on your computer actually does support. It's a common problem, especially with movie, music, and image files.

Here are a few of the best free video converters (such as for MP4 and AVI files), audio converters (MP3s, WAVs, etc.), image converters (e.g., files that end with PSD, JPG, and PNG), and document converters (PDF, DOCX, etc.).

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Free Video Converters

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Video converter software converts one kind of video file into another. Most of them support popular formats such as 3GP, AVI, DIVX, F4V, FLV, V4V, MKV, MOV, MP4, MPG, SWF, WMV, and much more.

Many video converters also convert DVD and BD movies into various other video formats such as MP4, FLV, AVI, etc. Some of these output formats are ideal for use on mobile devices.

Dozens of fantastic, completely free video converters are available, like Any Video Converter and Online Video Converter.

Although some of the video converter tools in that list are able to copy videos directly from a disc, consider a DVD ripper program if all you want is to back up a movie to your computer. There are also tools that can do the reverse: burn videos to a DVD or BD.

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Free Audio Converters

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Audio converter software converts one kind of audio file into another. Most programs support common music formats such as FLAC, OGG, M4A, MP3, WAV, WMA, and several more. Some also can extract audio information from video files.

Among these high-quality, completely free audio converters, you'll find many that are online, which means you can use the software from right inside your web browser.

A couple of our favorites include Audio Convert and Zamzar (both are online options).

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Free Image Converters

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Image converter software converts one kind of photo or graphics file into another. The best image converters support hundreds of common and rare image formats, but almost all of them can convert BMP, EMF, GIF, ICO, JPG, PCX, PDF, PNG, PSD, RAW, TIF, WMF, and several others.

Many image converters also feature batch operation, allowing you to convert several files into a particular format all at once.

Some of the best available are completely free, and some even work entirely online (e.g., Image Candy) so you don't have to download anything. 

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Free Document Converters

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Document converter software converts one kind of document file—such as word processing, spreadsheet, database, presentation, etc.—into another of a similar type.

Most document converters support common formats such as DOC, DOCX, PDF, PPT, PPTX, TIF, TXT, WKS, XLS, XLSX, and much more. Some can even convert image formats with text information to actual text-based files, allowing you to edit the information you couldn't before. This is called optical character recognition (OCR).

There's no need to buy a program when you can use any of these at absolutely no cost. We recommend FileZigZag if you need to convert a smaller document, or AVS Document Converter if you prefer a desktop app.

Tip

If you're looking to convert a PDF file to Microsoft Word's DOC or DOCX format, dedicated free PDF-to-Word converters may work a bit better. There are also opposite tools, such as Excel-to-PDF converters.

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Other Free Converters for Miscellaneous File Formats

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Obviously, not all files contain video, audio, images, or documents. The free file converters here convert between many less common formats.

These disc image converters (ISO, IMG, etc.), font converters (TTF, OTF, DFONT, etc.), compressed file converters (ZIP, RAR, 7Z, CAB, etc.), and much more are all available free of charge.

If you're not sure what file type you need to convert, and none of the previously discussed converters were useful, one of these miscellaneous converters might be helpful.

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