Avidemux instructions for "dummies"

[djboshh]

I'm absolutely new to video editing (including lossless trimming) & Avidemux too. I found the understanding of the basics and principles obviously hard and really got the impression that the help tutorials for Avidemux were geared towards those who at least knew something about the subject already , & I especially found the concepts of things like container formats, codecs, how and why certain formats can be exchanged & repackaged (and why some can't) quite hard to realise and understand. I'm thinking that it would of been great to have had a help section just for absolute beginners who know nothing about it all, with the basic essential concepts explained, and written in a way that an absolute beginner can understand. It would be a shame if absolute beginners were put off by how complex it can seem at 1st and never got to realise how great & powerful this piece of software really is.

[zakk]

You want general video file knowledge, which is not specific to Avidemux. Wikipedia is a good start.

[J. M.]

OK, here's a first attempt at creating some official quickstart guide:

http://www.avidemux.org/admWiki/doku.php?id=using:quickstart

Let me know if it's dumb enough.

[Jan Gruuthuse]

Looks nice and good basic explanation, thanks.

[djboshh]

Looks great to me already – thanks so much for taking the time.

Just a few ideas from me too:

- There’s a spelling mistake in the basic terms section: "automagically"

- Perhaps you could also mention that when saving your file you have to manually add the file extension yourself?

- An interface image would be a touch too, perhaps with red numbers on it that people can reference too from your text?

- Would the basic terms be better at the beginning?

- Should the “container format” be the 1st term explained before the rest?

- Finally, maybe a chart showing which container formats can hold which video & audio types (and ones they can’t), & maybe ones typically found too. Also, which container formats can be readily swapped with another/others?

Thanks again 

[J. M.]

- There’s a spelling mistake in the basic terms section: "automagically"

Actually, that's not a mistake.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/automagical

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=automagically

Perhaps you could also mention that when saving your file you have to manually add the file extension yourself?

OK, added. (Still, I think it would be better if users would not have to add these extensions manually. This has been the most requested feature for Avidemux in the last couple of years.)

An interface image would be a touch too, perhaps with red numbers on it that people can reference too from your text?

Maybe, but we already have the User interface/Main window article, and it may not be the best idea to duplicate too many things...

Would the basic terms be better at the beginning?

Perhaps. I was thinking about it, too, and I agree it should be the first thing the users should learn before using Avidemux. On the other hand, I'm afraid of losing the readers' interest when the Quickstart guide for Avidemux begins with some boring general terminology instead of saying something about Avidemux...

Should the “container format” be the 1st term explained before the rest?

OK, done.

- Finally, maybe a chart showing which container formats can hold which video & audio types (and ones they can’t), & maybe ones typically found too. Also, which container formats can be readily swapped with another/others?

The section links to the Output formats article with its table of supported audio/video formats in different containers. Again, I don't think it would be a good idea to duplicate this in the Quickstart introduction, which should be really short and simple, otherwise nobody would bother reading it. in fact, I'm afraid it's already too long... In my opinion, if anything in this Quickstart introduction needs a more detailed explanation, it should just link to a separate article, and if the separate article is currently not good enough (like, not understandable to normal people), that separate article should be improved instead.

Thanks for the input.

[djboshh]

Well done & thanks again 

[Jan Gruuthuse]

Perhaps you could also mention that when saving your file you have to manually add the file extension yourself?

OK, added. (Still, I think it would be better if users would not have to add these extensions manually. This has been the most requested feature for Avidemux in the last couple of years.)

This is weird, or is this just a 2.6 feature? In linux (ubuntu 11.10 64-bit) when saving and no extension is provided, the end result is a filename with its correct format container extension: .avi, .mkv, .ts, .mp4. Only problem when you provide a more complicated name like

Chura Liya - Bally Sagoo Ft. Debashish Das.mp3

The software thinks the provided extension is . Debashish Das.
Now that I start thinking about this: did start noticing this when using Audacity and using multiple exporting of audio files? Could it be that this is an OS driven feature? When you leave the extension away the OS (linux/unix) still knows what flavor the file is.

[J. M.]

This is weird, or is this just a 2.6 feature? In linux (ubuntu 11.10 64-bit) when saving and no extension is provided, the end result is a filename with its correct format container extension: .avi, .mkv, .ts, .mp4.

Ehh... I completely missed that.

Revision 7717: [muxer] Add a default extension, automatically appended if no . is found. Else that troubles windows user