Hi all. I'm new to this forum, but I heard it was the best to talk about AV issues. This isn't necessarily a typical AV question, but I'd like to get your opinion on what the best video transcoding software that most consumers are using right now? I'm writing an article on transcoders using Nvidia's CUDA and I'd like to compare CUDA-enabled programs to some of today's popular transcoding software.

Any one have a favorite transcoding program they use?

What exactly do you mean by "transcoding"?
I suspect you are maybe using the wrong term.

I found that MeGUI with Avisynth and x264 was effective.

What I'm asking is this: What is the best program consumers use to convert video files to different formats? I believe the process of converting files to different formats is transcoding correct?

Depends on what you are converting from and what you want to convert to.
For example I use cloneMobile to convert dvds to mpeg4 for my iphone. I use various encoders to convert uncompressed video to other formats depending on what I need , mpeg2 , QT whatever.

Supporting a particular type of hardware acceleration normally isn't my main priority so you may be limiting yourself unneccessarily.

Autogk for divx/xvid encoding
Nero recode for mp4

Those are the one I use for transcoding what I capture. But lately, for physical media, I prefer to simply make iso. HDD are cheap now so space isn't a factor anymore.