Hey,

I'm pretty new to encoding/transcoding/decoding of A/V in general. I know basic stuff, containers, streams, res, etc., but it kind of ends there.

To further this, I'm starting a job upon graduation at the end of this year which focuses HEAVILY on the above (media drivers). Now it's not *necessary* that I learn this stuff, they're well aware I do not, but I'd like to get a jump on it, both for myself and for future work. I have some videos I'd like to transcode properly and I simply don't know enough about it to do it properly. I'm not sure how in-depth I want to get (ie. messing with like P/S/etc. frame settings and such), yet.

For example, if somebody was to ask me to describe the trade-offs between H.264 and AVC I'd be completely drawing a blank.

So where is a good place/site to start reading up on this? I def. want to learn more about media in general for my own uses and I feel it will be of great help in the future.

Like right now is a perfect example: I transcoded (I think, lol) a video using Kdenlive to MPEG4 at a lower res. Why MPEG4? Not sure, it didn't give errors like the H.264 encoding (just wrote an empty file and said it was finished..), but it has no audio. Trying to get answers to these questions and piece together how most of the stuff works with media *coding in general.

I realize that media *coding is a VERY in-depth field, but I'm not discouraged from learning (I also don't know how in-depth I'm going to go, yet), so, yeah. Any help as to reading material would be great - preferably online. Maybe I can figure out what's going on with Kdenlive by myself (probably not, lol) and why I don't have audio. Though if you have any suggestions as to why I have no audio by all means suggest :).

TIA, much appreciated. Sorry for the long post. And sorry again if this is in the wrong forum...seemed most appropriate..

H.264 is a industry standerd supported by many hd camcorders but is rendered to mpg4
avchd is used with h.264 to burn blueray disks!
If I understand it corectly kdenlive transcoding changes all file types to raw video. I dont use it much I just render to my chosen file type. I have also rendered a few empty files or files without sound. just try to render it agin until it works.( if rendering to .webm the sound must be a .ogg file.)
as far as finding info on the differant containers in kdenlive just type the file type ie mpg4 in google. and good luck on your new job.

Thanks for the info & the luck!

I wasn't using webm, but I'll give it a try with OGG. I have tried this on multiple settings and all have failed (some just flat-out crash kdenlive when I start the encoding).

As for finding info: Yeah, I know typically if there's one thing in specific you have a question on you can typically find info via google, though I was speaking more of like an introductory page to the world of *coding, collection of knowledge that's 'general' and 'expected' in the community type stuff. Then obviously I'd dive deeper into whatever I didn't understand and/or wanted more info about.

For helpful articles on a wide range of video related stuff I think this is an impressive site
http://www.videohelp.com/

Also like the Doom9 forum for info on codecs and formats - just ask them what you want to know
Website
http://www.doom9.org/
and their forum
http://forum.doom9.org/

Dont forget Wikipedia - the often give great info for example H264 see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC

When Transcoding from Kdenlive or SonyVegas (which I run under wine) I tend to use Mpeg2 because I want a file that is very compatible and will play back easily on my TV so I use mpeg2 4000 bitrate I tried With h264 and it's more hit and miss if my tv will play it - guess hardware takes for ever to catch up with video developments.