Two simple things that could make Avidemux useful to many more people.

[JHD]

I'm a new user, and after a few days my impression is that Avidemux is a powerful piece of software - it can do things no other editor (at least that I've found) can do.  I speculate that some fairly trivial additions might make it useful to a (very much) larger group of people.

I distinguish two broad use cases:
1) One-off edits, including cuts:  If you want something done one time, you can set up the filters/codecs etc. and get it done pretty effectively.  For this kind of work the U.I. seems quite effective once you understand it conceptually.

2) Bulk conversions: This includes larger scale or repetitive operations you want to do on multiple files; generally conversions of some kind, not cuts.
To do even the simplest operation more than once without explicitly re-setting all of the settings requires the ability to program in python, and a willingness to learn the subset of it and new classes required.  This is a *very* tall bar, and I would guess excludes a high percentage of potential users.  I am a python programmer, but I'm living with the frustration of setting the filters over and over because it's still faster than digging in and learning the scripting interface.

Here are two very simple things that could fill the gap between casual users and power users:
1) Make Avidemux retain all of the settings/filters etc. between jobs, so that if you want to do something more than once, you don't have to re-enter them.  This would be a big help even if (2) doesn't make the cut.
2) Allow selecting/specifying multiple input files, and implicitly queue them for identical processing.  This would require some way to specify a template for output filenames, but if that's too complicated just using the input filename and appending an index if needed to avoid overwriting other files would be good enough (Windows can do this automatically, I believe).

Thanks again to the devs and all who support Avidemux.
-J

[EEMcGee]

Here is the method I came up with for windows version.  Just open one of the video files, set your audio tracks, set your video and audio recode settings, and filters if you want those, then save it as a project.  Open the project file in a text editor and get rid of the video file open information.  Then save it again making sure it is saved with the .py extension.
Open a text editor and copy this in.

set avidemux="C:\Program Files\Avidemux 2.6 - 64 bits\avidemux.exe"
for /R %%f in (*.avi) do if not exist %%f.mp4 %avidemux% --load "%%F" --run "Your Project File.py" --save "%%~dpF%%~nF.mp4" --quit

This is if you were opening AVI files and recoding to MP4 files.  The "Your Project File.py" would be whatever you named the project as.  It will also check to make sure you haven't already processed the AVI file into an MP4 and skip it if you have.  That way if you haven't deleted an AVI that you already processed it won't recode it again.  It will save the recoded MP4 file to the same directory with the same name as the original only as an MP4.  It also does the same for all sub folders within the folder.  Save the file with a .bat extension.

Now put both the .py file and .bat file into the folder your video files are in and double click the .bat file.  When all is done just select all of the original video files and delete.  You can always throw more files in and run the .bat again to process the new ones.

[EEMcGee]

It would be nice for alot of people that may not be a capable to be able to open up a file in a directory, set all of their coding and filter settings, then select from the files menu an option to recode all files in that directory with the same settings. Cut points are not something that can be done by my above posted method unless recoding as there is not a command for .PY project files capable of going the the nearest I-frame to the time setting in the Markers.  The same marker points will not always land on an I-frame for all video files.  If this were programmed into a menu option you could even just use the option to cut at approximately the same time markers (just have Avidemux seek to the previous or next closest I-frame) from the marker set points without recoding(copy mode).

Seek to next I-frame would be a nice command to have in the .py files.