Don’t buy apps for things you only need to do once in a blue moon. Find a free/open solution.
As a general rule, this seems like the exact opposite of what you should do. If the free/open solution threatens to take two hours to set up, and the for-pay software will do the job in five minutes for $19, you should probably buy the software -- unless you intend to use the open solution over and over, which will amortize the setup time over many weeks or months.
I would certainly argue that this applies to VisualHub, for example. Not having to figure out the command-line options to ffmpeg is worth $24, especially if you're only planning to use it once in a blue moon.
As a general rule, this seems like the exact opposite of what you should do. If the free/open solution threatens to take two hours to set up, and the for-pay software will do the job in five minutes for $19, you should probably buy the software -- unless you intend to use the open solution over and over, which will amortize the setup time over many weeks or months.
I would certainly argue that this applies to VisualHub, for example. Not having to figure out the command-line options to ffmpeg is worth $24, especially if you're only planning to use it once in a blue moon.