Beginners

De MiniCoder Wiki.

MiniCoder is a video transcoder that allows you to quickly convert from one format to another. It is designed for .NET framework 2.0 and to only work on Windows based devices.

MiniCoder has been designed to be simple to use even for people with barely any knowledge of video encoding. The most popular codecs have been made available for output and support has been added for the most common input containers: MKV, OGM, MP4, AVI.

Right now there is only the simple version of MiniCoder available. The simple version only has limited customisation options to prevent the application from being to hard to comprehend for beginners.

Later down the line there should also be an advanced version available with alot more options available, more output codecs, ... Though of course the interface for this version will no longer be newbie friendly and require a decent knowledge of the encoding process and the parts surrounding it.

As stated before the interface of MiniCoder- Simple is "simple" as the version type describes. It will not contain much terms or settings that a starting user wouldn't understand after a few tries. The only information someone would know are the basics as names of codecs and terms like Sharpening, resizing, de-noising,...

There are 3 screens to take account with when encoding a file:

Input

The input tab basically shows witch files you want to encode and what you want to do after the encode. On this tab you can add or remove files from the queu.

Settings

On the settings tab you select how you want to encode your file. It contains all settings for video, audio and filter options. The audio settings will be used on all audio streams. There is no way to separately encode them with other settings.

Filters are basically video editors that can improve the quality of the output file. You can sharpen, denoise, resize and de-interlace the input video. These settings are especially important when dealing with low bit rates as they can greatly impact the visual quality of the outputted file.

The settings on this tab can be saved to a template. This will make it easier to create profiles for different type of files. Saving a template will override if that template is already present.

Options

The options tab contains all settings about the encoding process. You can choose where the output file has to go, disable parts of the encoding process like audio encoding or chapters. It also allows access to the applications window where you can select custom paths and update software if needed.

You will get automatic warnings about new updates as they come out but you can also choose to ignore updates if you want to.

There are also 2 other tabs witch do not serve any significant purpose to the encoding process.

The log basically shows the actions the program performs behind the scenes. You can use it to debug errors or to check what the program is doing. The news tab show news updates about the program and the things surrounding it.