Question: My friend recorded some videos on his camcorder, and the one I want to convert is 1.66gb, 1440x1080, 6 audio channels. I want to shrink this down to something like 480x360, and 2 audio channels... or anything small enough that I can upload it to facebook/youtube. I also want to crop out a section of it.

I tried ffmpeg, winff, 'any video converter', virtualdub, and picasa. ffmpeg and winff *really* don't like the 6 audio channels, and throw weird errors when I try slicing the video, 'any video converter' did convert the movie but de-synced the audio, virtualdub refuses to open the file (bad file format), and ... well picasa has to crop functionality, but can't crop it until i convert it (plus, I haven't the slightest clue where it outputs the files to).

There are about 18 billion video converters out there when I search, and they all have free downloads... but which ones will (a) actually convert my file into a usable format, and (b) not install spamware/only convert the 10 seconds, or something else stupid?

I'm running windows 7.

Answer: 
I'm using the heck out of [HandBrake](http://handbrake.fr/). It's my favorite by far. it will convert MTS.

I'm running Win8 /8.1 now. Used it all the time in 7 as well.
Give [MediaCoder](http://www.mediacoderhq.com/) a shot. It should do what you want with a few clicks.