Suggestions to help new users

[Colin Hume]

I realise there are lots of options, but I wish more help could be given to guide me through them.  Frequently I set some values, try to save the file, give a file name, and THEN it gives me three messages telling me that I can't do that!  Surely the best approach is to filter out these possibilities before I even get to the Save.

As I see it (and no doubt others will disagree) the most important setting is "Output format", so this should appear at the top.  I tried unsuccessfully to save an mpeg-2 video as MP4 and I know others have done the same.  Surely if this isn't allowed, the MP4 option should be greyed out in the drop-down list.  Once the user has selected the Output format, unusable options should be greyed out in (or removed from) the other drop-down lists.

I'm now processing a .WMV file, but I can't find any way to save it in any format.  I've set the output to Mpeg-PS muxer (ff) and the Video output to Mpeg2 (ff).  I get a message: "Video - Cannot setup codec.  Bitrate too low?".  This is not too helpful to a new user - how do I know whether the bitrate is too low?  I Googled this and found http://write.flossmanuals.net/avidemux/resizing-video/ which tells me to configure the video output: Set Encoding type to "Two-pass - Average Bitrate" and Average bitrate to 1200, which I've done.  But it still won't save.  I don't have strong feelings about the output format - it seems https://www.zamzar.com/ will convert most things to my eventual preferred format of MP4 - but I can't save it as anything!

Finally, I suggest that the website link in the "About" box should be clickable.  And I would have expected a "Contact us" link on the website, though maybe the forums are a substitute for that.

[eumagga0x2a]

As I see it (and no doubt others will disagree) the most important setting is "Output format"

As you mention here, I don't see conclusive and persuading reasons to assume that the choice of the muxer should have priority over the choice of encoders for video and audio. I like the idea of exposing only applicable options to users, but in this case I feel that having three menus (actually four as the audio encoder menu in the codec widget applies only to the first audio track, everything beyond that has to be configured in the dedicated dialog) with complicated interdependencies would be worse than the status quo.

Cascading error popups are bad, sure. Not trivial to fix as they come from different parts of the application, would love to see them avoided one day.

I'm now processing a .WMV file, but I can't find any way to save it in any format.

As there is no WMV/ASF muxer in Avidemux. You have no other choice as to re-encode it, as you already tried...

I've set the output to Mpeg-PS muxer (ff) and the Video output to Mpeg2 (ff).

Do you want to use the output to make a video DVD? Else there is no use for the MPEG-PS muxer and MPEG-2 codec.

I get a message: "Video - Cannot setup codec.  Bitrate too low?".

The misleading text has been modified after the 2.7.5 release. The Avidemux log (admlog.txt from %localappdata%\avidemux\ on Windows) should contain hints why re-encoding failed. A most probable reason is non-standard size or non-standard fps of the source file. You should insert apropriate video filters to make it suitable for DVD.

Please note that if width or height of a video is odd, many video encoders will reject such a file. You would need a current Avidemux nightly build to crop or scale it in order to make it acceptable for re-encoding.

https://avidemux.org/nightly/

I Googled this and found http://write.flossmanuals.net/avidemux/resizing-video/ which tells me to configure the video output: Set Encoding type to "Two-pass - Average Bitrate" and Average bitrate to 1200, which I've done.  But it still won't save.

Almost all existing documentation for Avidemux targets very old versions which have almost nothing to do with the current application and is merely of historic interest. The failure here has nothing to do with MPEG-2 encoder settings.