Today's work is two-fold; some of the wtv files (from Windows Media Center) convert to mp4 using the free program called Handbrake. It's quite powerful and in the past at work in the university library I used it as one way to rip foreign language DVDs and burn in the English language subtitles for use in classrooms. The videos were web optimized and shared in Blackboard (one of the content management classroom packages of software used in education).

The other project is converting programs that were recorded in JRiver to mp4 files so they take up less space and can be used in various players (VLC, etc.). VideoLAN (VLC) can also do a lot of converting tasks, but I found in the past that it does so many things that it takes more steps to accomplish some things. Anyway, on the old computer I have JRiver converting one of the files it recorded into an mp4 format.

Both computers are running their fans and processing away. It isn't instant but it is the kind of task that you can set running in the background as long as you're not running any other processor hogs (Adobe software, in particular).

MP4 isn't the best format perhaps for archival copies of things, or at least, most standard mp4 settings, but none of this is precious, it's just stuff I want to keep but not have it buried in dedicated files and only playable on one program.