Need help on MPEG basics

[Markwang]

Hello,I want to have some basic understanding about MPEG (sampling,encoding,etc.) but couldn't find a real good article.The best one I could find so far is this one: http://www.fh-friedberg.de/fachbereiche/e2/telekom-labor/zinke/mk/mpeg2beg/beginnzi.htm. But it also assumes you already have some knowledge before reading. For example,in the section "MPEG-2 Video" it draws a picture to show that a macroblock has 4 blocks of 8x8 pixels,however,soon after that it draws another picture to say that a macroblock has a stucture of 4 Y blocks and 1 Cb and 1 Cr blocks, so totally 6 blocks. I guess that I need to read some other articles before this one and hopefully, those articles wont suggest me to read this one first!

Any help would be appreciated very much.

[jggimi]

Hello, and welcome to the forum.

I'm going to recommend the DivX User Guide (http://www.divx.com/divx/divxpro/guides/). Whether or not you happen to use DivX, or any other MPEG-4 codec, the guide has a great deal of information on Macroblocks, Quantizers, Motion Vectors ... available in four languages, and all with images that help describe these general MPEG technologies.

[DigitAl56K]

To speak to the particular point you raise:

MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 ASP use a colorspace called "YV12". Essentially the luma channel (Y) is sampled every pixel, and the chroma channels (Cr, Cb) channels are sub-sampled by a factor of 2. This means for every 16x16 luma pixels you have 8x8 chroma pixels in each chroma channel, or 4 luma blocks, 1 chroma pair (1xCr block + 1xCb block), if you want to think of it that way.

[shevegen]

chroma... luma... with my many posts i still dont know much.
But I am slowly learning. Wondering when have I reached GURU status, but I must also admit, I think I'd probably be too lazy to read industry specs ... ;)

[Koepi]

Hm, high post count you say...? ;-)

Most of the basics are explained very often and very well (sometimes for beginners, then for the experts) on the net. Just use google or a search engine of your choice.

Chroma and Luma... maybe you want to read about color spaces: http://www.neuro.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~aly/polygon/info/color-space-faq.html

Also, we have many stickies/FAQs in the sub-forums here which are worth reading, also the guides on doom9's main-site are helping a great deal.

It's impossible to do all the work for other people, they still have to _read_ and _understand_ the information out there :(

Cheers
Koepi

[dragongodz]

for mpeg 1 and 2 there is always
http://www.mpeg.org
of course. even has a F.A.Q. about colour spaces used etc etc etc. :)

[Markwang]

Thanks a lot,everyone. Now I have so much to read. The Divx User Guide is really a great one for beginners and has far more than expected(I didn't see a document for MPEG1/2 like this).DigitAl56K gave me the hint to distiguish Pixel Macroblock and Sampling Macroblock.Koepi's one might be a bit too high level at this moment but will keep for future reference and dragongodz's link just includes everything(?) about MPEG and need more time to digest. As a newbie I am often stuck by some basic stuff,for example,it seems to me that there is no document to explain what exactly means for each digit in the expression of 4:4:4,4:2:2,4:2:0,4:1:1...,maybe some one could help me to figue it out.
Thanks again.

[CirTap]

Originally posted by Koepi
Also, we have many stickies/FAQs in the sub-forums here which are worth reading, also the guides on doom9's main-site are helping a great deal.
*LOL*
sorry.

@anybody:
Just my 2 cents. There are in fact too many guides and FAQs to start from scratch. Searching the forum is almost useless 'cos a starter just has no clue know what to to look for. Valuable information a burried deep inside 50 page long threads nobody (new to the site) is able to read or to follow at all, most because they appear as a comment unrelated to a threads subject.
Just like in any forum where people "discuss".
The information is simply said overwhealming -- at best.

Many guides are also far too specific, to solve one particular "problem" using a particular set of tools, and even movie sources: in fact not any of the plenty guides I read was of any help for me to solve "my" problem back in November, when I found this site.
I ran into even more acronyms, even more tools doing very special tasks, with click-throu instructions not tellng me why the do it or why I have not.
Most guides do only instruct and give the reader orders, but they fail to explain why. They don't teach, and so people don't learn what they should know to proceed and to abstract the "ideas".

It's no big help to read about how to encode an NTSC interlaced Anime with let's say "CCE 2.whatever" if you live in Europe trying to deal with a VHS capture source, and have no clue what the guide author is talking about because of the incredible amount of "three letter acronyms" spreading the text :)
However, I don't know if such a particular guide actually exists here. It's just a "typical" example and I hope you (and others wondering about this ranting <g>) get a picture of a "newbie's problem".

I found this whole DVD subject myself a very, very special science, a subject that's not simplified if you're instructed to use around 20 different fully undocumented specialized tools to "simply put a movie on a DVD". Of course it's a DivX movie only.
Most annoying: DivX all over the place. Tons of guides and tips on how to squeeze another byte out of a ripped "legal copy", but very few info on how to create a plain vanilly DVD from either original material or a dumb TV/VHS capture to look at on a plain vanilla TV: not a PC.

Sure it's a pretty complex thing -- this I found out.
Please believe me: I really appreciate all the efforts of the poeple writing these guides, and their obvious deep knowledge of the subject.
The trouble with most sources: the people who wrote them are already "betriebsblind", to use a german proverb: "having become blind to shortcomings in company processes"

To put it simply: if more of these indeed excellent FREE tools had a little more documentation comming with them, to explan WHAT they're good for and what not, there'd be no need for that many dedicated "instructions", because one cound simple RTFM of the application -- no manual, no reading.
I know, I know: I'm a developer myself -- writing docs sux :)
So many great tools are thrown into the public in an almost mindless manner. This kind of take-it-or-leave-it mentality is very frustrating if you find out, that the "documentation" actually happens nside a zillion spreaded threads. Very effective.

It took me month to actually understand *why* (for example) VirtualDub is what it is, what's it for and when to use it -- and when not. What MuxMan or the "BeSweet suite of command line tools" and their horrible companion GUIs do, that DGIndex is nothing but the successor of some DVD2AVI ... after reading outdated "recommended" guides, threads, and following uncounted dead links to other webpages from guides and forum posts and FAQs.

Most people have other things to care of in RL than to spend their precious free time reading and searching w/o getting any results done, because what they're supposed to do does not apply to their situation and what they're supposed to read or download does no longer exist.

How easy it is to burn a few songs on a CD to listen to in the car :-)

I apologize to Markwang for hijacking his thread.

I just felt like saying this.
All of you talents, writers, transcoders, rippers, developers: take one step back and watch your excellent work from a different perpesctive: you first time readers and first time users.

Please all: take my appologize for this lil' rant. I'm unworthy, I know.

Have fun, God bless y'all, live long and prosper.

CirTap

[Koepi]

Originally posted by CirTap
Most people have other things to care of in RL than to spend their precious free time reading and searching w/o getting any results done, because what they're supposed to do does not apply to their situation and what they're supposed to read or download does no longer exist.
[/B]

Sorry, but I simply don't get paid enough here (just to make it clear, I spend my free time here and don't get paid at all for that. Also, every mod and every programmer around here have way more important things to do in RL, too.) to do all the work (of researching) for every newbie. That paragraph of yours shows an understanding of "getting help" which is dangerous to the whole community (if a thing like that exists). I really dislike social vampirism.

It is _not_ too much asked to search, read up things and get deeper into the whole matter. I'm not inerested in solving your problem, _you_ are - so should the work be spent by _you_ and not by me.

I hope you get the idea, admittedly I didn't put it to well into words :)

Cheers
Koepi

[jggimi]

There's a spot on the forum search page (http://forum.doom9.org/search.php?s=) which is extremely helpful:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/jggimi/search-tip.png If you click Show results as posts your search will show you only individual posts within threads. There is no need to wade through many different posts (or pages of posts) to find your keywords.

You can restrict your post to a specific forum.

You can just search thread titles if you wish, this is also helpful.And, if you want to find a page from one of Doom9's guides by keyword, www.doom9.org has its own search:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/jggimi/search-tip2.png

See my .sig?

[Inventive Software]

It takes a bit of knowledge to use the "Search" function properly and effectively. Unfortunately, I don't have the patience to learn how to use the search properly, because, like most people, I want to know how to do something without having to trawl through hundreds (maybe thousands) of posts just to find the little bit of info I am after. I also don't have the internet on my personal computer, or broadband because the prices are just a little too out of my range at the moment. :(

To give an example, my abilities in searching the web for things is limited to Google (arguably it is the best) and hoping that I can get maybe through a few hundred search results before I find what I'm looking for.

For a more recent example, I posted something in the "Containers" forum on Doom9 with regard to AVI overhead, having not found any relevant information on the net. Me and stephenv had some interesting posts relating to not just the overhead, but how to calculate file sizes properly. Two birds killed with one stone (and a very helpful person, thanks stephenv).

Asking directly for what you want is usually supposed to be used as a last resort. The search function is there for a reason. It justs need a little time and effort to learn to use it properly. If you are going to post for advice / help or something else related, please don't be vague. I know it sounds a little crazy but the more detail we can look at, the more we can help. Crazy but true. Too often I have seen threads started that are 1 or 2 lines, are very much relevant, but give too little information.

Check out the MPEG-4 guide (New A/V Codecs / MPEG-4 FAQ) for info on MPEG-4 encoding / general information.

I hope this helps.

[communist]

Originally posted by Inventive Software
like most people, I want to know how to do something without having to trawl through hundreds (maybe thousands) of posts just to find the little bit of info I am after.
In other words anyone who comes to doom9 can expect to just post his question and have it answered (in a timely manner) or get linked to appropriate guides / docs?

(IMHO) The point is to not have the same topic everyday... while the newbies will get their question answered the regular visitors just might get 'bored' or even get fed up with having to answer the same thing every day.
A good example would be under / oversizing issues with XviD which we had a LOT of recently.

Add to this:
Too often I have seen threads started that are 1 or 2 lines, are very much relevant, but give too little information.
and you'll quickly realize that if anyone is too lazy to post specifically what he wants - why bother replying?

[echooff]

CirTap does have a point. It is overwelming for a newbie. The amount of information you have to learn before you can even know what to ask is enormous. When I first stumbled upon this site I spent 6 months reading the guides and the forum before I even registered. That is one of the reasons I spend a lot of time in the newbie section trying to answer their questions. Having said that; people will learn faster and have a better understanding doing the research.

[CirTap]

Hi,

seems like I need to clearly state again: I do fully appreciate all the people's FREE work and help. I only wrote down an "observation" I made here in the last couple of month while using this public site, and the publicly available tools it offers (directly and indirectly.)

Also: this is NOT an attempt to offend you! I don't even use any of your work 'cos I have no personal need of it.
I'd rather like keep this as a general kind of objection; you just happen to be here praising the guides and faqs (again) :-) It could have been anybody else causing me to post the very same. Peace! :D
communist
In other words anyone who comes to doom9 can expect to just post his question and have it answered (in a timely manner) or get linked to appropriate guides / docs? certainly not. However, if they'd been a bit better organized, there'd be no need for newbies to do what they do.
jggimi
See my .sig? yep, I fully agree with you :)
Thanx for the nice screenshots. However, you didn't get the point of my "observation", sorry :)
If you read further on you'll also find out why (I think) telling anybody to use *this* forum's search is totally pointless.
Originally posted by Koepi
Sorry, but I simply don't get paid enough here (just to make it clear, I spend my free time here and don't get paid at all for that.
It's funny to read how people releasing free software and/or services to a public audience always bring up their killer arguement; "I simply don't get paid enough here" ...

I'm fully aware that you and your talented colleagues (mods, devs, volunteers) don't see cash on your account for your "services". All you get at best is the praise and honor of your users for something you have decided by your very own to release to the public.
Nothing and nobody prevents you from opening a PayPal account or put your Amazon wishlist URL in your sig or on your homepage: I received nice little gifts for my work this way. You won't get rich, but "matter" is often more pleasing than a couple of written words by a stranger :)

Ask domm9 to add two more fields to the profile so people can find a way to "pay" for somebody's work if they feel like doing so. Simple.

Originally posted by Koepi
Also, every mod and every programmer around here have way more important things to do in RL, too.) to do all the work (of researching) for every newbie.
Sure you do -- anyone has. I have never asked anybody on any forum to do research for me, and I didn't say in my posting anyone here has to. If you decide to do some research in order to help some stranger you don't know, that's ok and a nice act. I'd be grateful for that approach of that peron was me. And if you take the time to do research on your own will, you're probably interested in the subject yourself, aren't you?
But please keep in mind: the way you and other "insiders" and "pros" do research compared to the poor attempts of a newbie trying to find what he *thinks* he's looking for is different by nature, simple because the newbie doesn't even have a clue what to search for!
It's always amazing to me: if friends ask me for help with their PCs or apps and "didn't find anything" at Google -- the only available place in this Galaxy to use for search ;) --, I'm able to usually get the results instantly on the first two pages. Because I know what to search for and how to build the search pharse incl. where to search at all.

In the matter of this page's main subject: I'm still as much as a DAU to DVD & Co. like my curageuos friends sitting in front of their PC-monster wondering what happens to them.
I had to learn that my skills in computers, TV electronics, and audio engineering unfortunately are of very little help, too. But I'm getting to it day by day, thanks to websites like this!

Originally posted by Koepi
That paragraph of yours shows an understanding of "getting help" which is dangerous to the whole community (if a thing like that exists). I really dislike social vampirism.
Well, no. I don't expect or even insist to get (instant) help from a public forum like this, maintained by volunteer only. I don't even expect this from an official "support site" like, lets say, Experts Exchange (http://www.experts-exchange.com/), where I often volunteer myself. It's a give-and-take.

Newbies are in the unpleasant position to take first (and hopefully be grateful!) before they can give anything back.

Originally posted by Koepi
It is _not_ too much asked to search, read up things and get deeper into the whole matter. I'm not inerested in solving your problem, _you_ are - so should the work be spent by _you_ and not by me.
Of course you're not, why should you? You're free to skip any "request for help" you stumple upon.
I need to (partially) contradict your statement about using the search, however you're absolutely right to request people to read.
As Inventive Software said: a) "It takes a bit of knowledge to use the "Search" function properly and effectively.", and as I said, you can't use any search facility if you don't know what to search for and if the backend can simple no longer handle the amount of data.
Try to find something about "burn DVD" and "MPEG" or any codec using the search of this forum, and you're presented with half of the 600.000+ postings in this board!

There's no chance to broaden or to reduce a search result efficiently so after an hour wading and clicking and reading through pointles results or even guides you simply have to give up and post "the" question again.
Due to the nature of this while topic, information is spread in all its subforums, and I often found answers "by accident" in a forum which was (by it's title) totally out of scope of the inital question/problem.

As a matter of fact, I'm getting far better results using Google limited to "site:doom9.org" (http://www.google.de/search?as_q=&num=20&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=Xvid&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=doom9.org&safe=images) than the (meanwhile useless) search feature of this board. The example already gives me "about 5,070" matches which I can then drilldown.
Over six-hundred-thousand postings, in numbers 600.000, can't be successfully searched with a "simple" search form like the one in this board: it has definately reached its limits.

I can only repeat, that I fully understand and share your position, and you attitude! I'm a developer myself and I have also released free software to the public. I spent countless months on supporting "my users" by answering "the same questions" all over again in the respective forums. One day I was able to say RTFM, because I spent my oh so precious private time to write down a manual people can read, rather than wasting my time answering their dumb posts in the forum or retrieve the posting it was previously answered to place a "read this" link. On the long run, this prooves as being totaly counterproductive.
So if anybody decides to release some piece of software to the public without any adequate piece of written information, you can't blame people (users) for asking the same dumb questions all over again. You end up to WASTE your free time by your own fault.

Just last year I sat down and documented some 70.000+ lines of source code and examples for an API I wrote, because I was sick to repeatingly answer the same basic questions all over again: it took me a week to WTFM so people can RTFM and leave me alone ;)
I can now spend my free time bother the volunteers in this forum :D

So here's my offer: anyone who's interested in reorganizing and restructuring the "naturally grown mess" of the many helpful information spreading this site/forum is welcome to contact me by PM. I have access to several webservers and webspace to initiate and to support such a "newbie's entry point" project - for free :)

Oh, and thank you, echooff, for your point :-)

Have fun,

CirTap

[Shinigami-Sama]

he does have a point guys hte site's search is to basic jsut search for "QCM" and you'll get over 30 pages not fun to stift through and most of them say "try another.." or "QCM advice" or "QCM comparisin" ect...
even limiting by user doesn't help all to much if I understood more I would probly re-write some of hte faqs<with permission> toa more newb friendly but I don't under some of it and and I don't have to much freetime inbetween school work and story writing
with some improvemts to the search engine it would do better all it basicly needs imho is a more refined engine and a compare function ot try and omit simiral results much hte same way google, yahoo, hotbot, ect.. do - then it would be worth useing but at over 30pages for almsot anything searched it to much to be usfull when only 5 of them have releveant information on
furthermore most newbs down know to refine hte search to more specifly what they need AKA "CQM designing" "ASP QPEL benfits" ect...
so untill those are even semi-ipmented hte search is just a big scary moster to most newbs

[echooff]

big scary moster to most newbs

Good comparison. I like that.:p :p

[CirTap]

Originally posted by Shinigami-Sama
with some improvemts to the search engine it would do better all it basicly needs imho is a more refined engine and a compare function ot try and omit simiral results much hte same way google, yahoo, hotbot, ect..
あなたに, Shinigami Sama 感謝しなさい。;)
However, I don't think there's a chance to improve this forum search. I'd rather suggest to kick this button and have it refer to Google's exhanced search.
I choose Experts Exchange on purpose, because they are an open and free support site, and provide over +1.2 million topics - topics, not posts! Although they have a pretty good search function available, the mods and site owners suggest in their FAQ to search via Google.
No "local" search engine is as powerful si it could compete with Google, and this site has an urgend need fo a Google-like search feature.
They offer site integration, and afaik even for free for non-profit pages.

Have fun,

CirTap

[Shinigami-Sama]

[/quote]
by cirtap
あなたに, Shinigami Sama 感謝しなさい。
However, I don't think there's a chance to improve this forum search. I'd rather suggest to kick this button and have it refer to Google's exhanced search.[/quote]
分かたない多い漢字ですよ　CirTap-参
I asume het IME got that right
<.<
but I agree with you google is bettre but if they just make hte defualt search use google like so many other or refine it it would make a fairly good search imho. It wouldn't take htat much time either google even provides hte html code for it and everyhting
but.
this thread has gone way offtopic but atleast it;s still dealing with a problem in finding hte info about the topic ;)

[communist]

I think we got waaaaay off topic ;)

[Guest]

Originally posted by CirTap
It took me month to actually understand *why* (for example) VirtualDub is what it is, what's it for and when to use it -- and when not. What MuxMan or the "BeSweet suite of command line tools" and their horrible companion GUIs do, that DGIndex is nothing but the successor of some DVD2AVI It took you a month to figure out how to pull down the About box on the DGIndex Help menu? :confused:

And what's so horrible about the GUIs? I find them to be very useful.

[Wilbert]

A few words from mine

Most annoying: DivX all over the place. Tons of guides and tips on how to squeeze another byte out of a ripped "legal copy", but very few info on how to create a plain vanilly DVD from either original material or a dumb TV/VHS capture to look at on a plain vanilla TV: not a PC.
Analogue capture guide.

It took me month to actually understand *why* (for example) VirtualDub is what it is, what's it for and when to use it -- and when not.
C'mon there is a virtualdub faq at www.virtualdub.org (there's also virtualdub stuff here: guides -> document overview).

that DGIndex is nothing but the successor of some DVD2AVI ...
dvd2avi faq

"BeSweet suite of command line tools" and their horrible companion GUIs do
You will see if you read any of the audio conversion guides here.

and so on ... You should type less and read more.

As to the more serious items

I ran into even more acronyms, even more tools doing very special tasks, with click-throu instructions not tellng me why the do it or why I have not.
Most guides do only instruct and give the reader orders, but they fail to explain why.
I understand that you (and other people) want to know the why stuff. The problem is that if you add that to the guides, it becomes four times larger and unreadable for noobs. Take a look at the analog capture guide for example, we added the why stuff there :)

If you want to know the why stuff you should look at the stickies and faqs in the forum. For example: Crusty's FAQ in the XviD FAQ, Essential reading: Force Film, IVTC, and Deinterlacing and more (in the dvd2avi forum), www.avisynth.org contains some stuff about sampling and colorformats, etc ... So I think most of the stuff is documented, but you just have to find it.

Btw, I'm not saying that things can't be improved. But it's not trivial to do this in a good way.

[CirTap]

Originally posted by neuron2
It took you a month to figure out how to pull down the About box on the DGIndex Help menu? :confused: What part of my post makes you think I had DGIndex in the first place?
The confusion rose from reading this site and some guides *first* which were all talking about some (meanwhile) outdated DVD2AVI/MPEG2DEC/DGMPEG2 or whatever, leading to a website entitled "DGMPGDec MPEG2 Decoder and Frame Server". That was long before I downloaded any of the various incarnations of this tool now know as DGIndex.exe and DGDecode.dll
That's the other source to successfully confuse newbies: the history of things :)

And what's so horrible about the GUIs? I find them to be very useful. Well, they'd not necessarily win a price for the best intuitive GUI design, that's it.
If it was so useful as you said, there'd be no need for BeLight ;)

You "grew up" with it, so you know all the background of the tools involved and sitting behind, and the buttons and dependencies that belong to them. That's some historical knowledge a new user does not have and problably never will gain -- and it's the user's perspective and first impression I'm talking about, nothing else.
As I said in my initial post: "betriebsblind" :-)

Thanks to daphy's(?) recent full installer, there's now a chance for new users to have all the requirements done - if they make it to find this installer @ needfulthings. Something that didn't exist when I got confronted with it last year.
My inability to use the full potential of "BeSweet" (just to stick with this example) in the beginning was to find the missing pieces for its backend. "Gladly" I own Cubase and WaveLab to do my (high quality) audio tasks, and meanwhile BeSweet's sometimes left to demux my AVI captures and do quick transcodings -- thanx to BeLight.

I mean let's face it: if all this was so easy to understand and to handle, there'd be no need for tools like "Auto Gordian Knot".
CLIs are not a bad idea at all, but not everyone's used to write batches with ten feet long commandlines (not talking about me, though).

But communist's right: we got way offtopic, despite it was the lack of "information retieval" to get behind the secret of the tools mentioned.

Have fun,
CirTap

[Guest]

Originally posted by CirTap
Well, they'd not necessarily win a price for the best intuitive GUI design, that's it. Oh, I see. You're quite happy to gratuitously trash people's work as "horrible" without any justification. Nice guy. You ought to apologize.

[CirTap]

Wilbert,
thanks for pointing to them for the sake of the original subject - again, sorry for hijacking this thread, Markwang!
This may happen on a busy forum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum).
Originally posted by Wilbert
Btw, I'm not saying that things can't be improved. But it's not trivial to do this in a good way. [/B]
Never did I say that there's NO valuable information present, or that ALL the information is plain wrong or useless. The purpose of my comments are to help you guys to improve what's there and add what's possibly missing - in case you didn't notice - and this requires some slight degree of critique.
It's nothing personal, and again: I highly appreciate everybody's work on this site! THANKS to the guides available here and THANKS to this (and other) forums and the volunteers.

I'd also like to re-offer my help to improve it - in my sometimes spare but always precious private time.
So I think most of the stuff is documented, but you just have to find it. That's the key sentence. The source of this thread and what made me write my first posting.
You should type less and read more. You bet I did read more than I finally needed :) long before I even "dared" to register, because I had no clue where to begin, and I filtered the stuff so far, otherwise I'd still be sitting there with by capture card in the one hand and the screwdriver in the other without knowing how to proceed.

I understand that you (and other people) want to know the why stuff. The problem is that if you add that to the guides, it becomes four times larger and unreadable for noobs. Partially correct: yes I want the details, but if details clutter the information, I fully agree that it's not a good idea to put them in the main text. That's the secret of good writing. That's why endnotes and footnotes were invented and it's one of the big advatages of HTML that you can "hyperlink" to the details pages.

Have fun,
CirTap

[DigitAl56K]

Writing a good guide is a mamoth undertaking. It took me weeks of day and night work to put together the DivX User Guide, and even the more simple "How-To" guides on DivX.com took a few hours each.

Throwing together a bullet list of steps to be taken is easy, but actually illustrating the process and communicating what is being done and why in a comprehensive fashion such that someone entirely new to the subject can fully understand the processes and underlying reasoning is very difficult.

Imagine trying to instruct someone how to convert an unprotected DVD to DivX for example using best practices: You would have to explain all about the DVD format, how to use tools like VobEdit, how AVISynth works, how to script it, where to apply certain plug-ins, how to install the plug-ins, where and how to de-interlace or ivtc and the reasons behind that, how to set up the encoder for the task in hand, how to use a suitable encoding application, how to multipass, how to decode audio and recode it as mp3, how to mux correctly, and so on.

Many of these steps are deserving of a guide or manual of their very own. In fact most of these do have manuals of their own. Producing comprehensive guide that covers everything is a very difficult and time consuming task, and at the end of it what do you have? A guide that covers one use case. Say I don't want to convert a DVD, I want to do live video capture. That's a whole new 200 page guide right there.

Working with any set of complex tools is never easy, but you have to give credit where it's due to those people who sit down and actually try to create materials the rest of us can learn from. I myself frequently find Doom9 to be an invaluable resource - nobody knows it all and there is always somebody out there who knows it better than you do. It's a wonderful thing that forums such as Doom9 exist and people are willing to invest their time to share that knowledge, but you have to play your part and invest your time in research and learning.

[CirTap]

neuron2,

Originally posted by neuron2
Oh, I see. You're quite happy to gratuitously trash people's work as "horrible" without any justification. Nice guy. You ought to apologize. Well, maybe you consider one justification the pure existance of the BeLightGUI?

Anyway, no need to get mad: I do apologize.
I admit, the word was badly choosen as this is mainly a matter of taste.
So please, "DD" and "Dg", authors of "BeeSweet GUI v0.7 b4": sorry that I dared to say in public that your choosen color scheme, the arrangement of widgets, or labeling, and concept of workflow caused some "irritation" in my eyes and that I namend this "horrible".
The application works very well and stable and that's want counts.

Peace!

Have fun,

CirTap

[CirTap]

DigitAl56K,
thanks for your explanation.

I'm fully aware of the amount of work it takes to write any kind of manual and to prepare screenshots and possible examples.
Even if I'm repeating myself: I never criticized the guides or their quality or even their authors. From a newbie's point of view, there's no lack of them, there are plenty.
Sure, the (many) DivX related topics & Co were not useful for *me*, but that doesn't mean there not usedful for other, that indeed want to create DivX files. I don't, so I had to abstract the information -- some of it I ran into by pure accident -- and extract the relevant information, or go and look someplace else.

The initial post was about how to find the information in this huge pile of nested documents, and simply because there are so many of them in too many locations, generic statements like :readguid: and :search: turn into useless hints for a newbie.
There's a need for some librarian to manage and organize this huge amount of information :) Or Google-inside as we found out.

I face this very problem every day with my colleagues and the users/readers of my documents: they need nore and less, tell what they're missing or complain about the way they are organized. That's life.

Have fun, off to sleep.

CirTap