VideoRaptor has a simple purpose - find and download freely available music and video. With such a simple purpose, you should expect the little application to do what it does well. On initial installation of VideoRaptor, you're presented with an intuative interface that's geared towards getting you searching for media files as quickly as possible. However, although the layout is logically organised, there isn't a wizard interface to guide you through the process of searching for music and video. And given that VideoRaptor does have a logical work flow process, this is a feature that would have made searching, downloading and converting an absolute breeze.

With such a simple purpose, you may expect VideoRaptor to offer a few more frills to finding music. And as mentioned above, VideoRaptor has a clear workflow from finding music to downloading and converting your multimedia files. Simply enter your search terms, select a returned file to download, set your conversion (encode) options, and then download.

Searching is as simple as typing your search terms into the search box and clicking the search button. VideoRaptor will then go off and find files accross the internet relating to your search. This performs admirably in returning both music and video files (search for 'snow'  and you'll get a whole host of artists and songs containing snow in the title returned). But here's where VideoRaptor's limited for us videophiles: rather than returning media relating to the general search term, it returns files with snow in the name. Ideal for searching for specific titles, but not so good for searching for music within a genre. It also returns songs regardless of 'legality'. VideoRaptor sits within the law by merely downloading songs and videos available to anyone, but if you don't hold the copyright to that music, then you're downloading illegal copies of mp3s. Again, this isn't exactly ideal for us videographers.

In summary this a great little 'aggregator' that uses several sites to search for media files in one. If you're not worried about sourcing 'doddgy' files, and you want an all in one application, then this is an ideal product, In fact the inclusion of a 'create ringtone' option says a lot about the target market for VideoRaptor. But it's not a tool for videographers to source royalty free music for their videos. Now that would be a handy application - a piece of software that searches, downloads and converts music, and also enables you to pay the appropriate royalty for use in your videos!

You can download a free trial of VideoRaptor from the website: http://videoraptor.com/en/mp3_video_downloads/index.html