There’s a baffling variety of video file types in use these days. Look around on the internet and you’ll come across video files in formats with strange names such as DivX.

There are quite a few programs available that can convert files from one video format to another.

However, Roxio’s Crunch is specifically designed to work with Apple products such as the iPod, AppleTV and the iPhone.

Apple has designed all these to work with one particular format, known as MPEG-4, sometimes called MP4.

There are other devices that work with these formats too, such as Sony’s PSP, so you could use Crunch to convert video for use on the PSP as well, but the focus is very much on the iPod.

Crunch’s main strength is simply that it’s very easy to use. Select the video files to work with and then select the specific device on which you want to play them, from a convenient drop-down menu. The quality settings can be adjusted using simple options. Crunch will then convert the video files into a format suitable for the Apple device.

It’s all very straightforward, and our only real criticism is that the supplied manual is a bit sloppy - we noticed a number of differences between the manual and the features we actually saw in the software on screen. Even so, Crunch works well and is easy to use, so it’s worth considering if for iPod or AppleTV owners with ever-expanding collections of video downloads. It works, out of the box, with both PCs (including Vista) and Macs.

Vista compatible: Yes