My favorite transcoding and all around video editing program for my Cowon D2, Avidemux, has released a new “preview” version. I’m a touch wary to try out new preview level software on a program I use regularly, but this update came with one awesome feature I’ve been waiting for. Avidemux now has .FLV support!
What the hell am I talking about?
You know those flash video files you watch over at Youtube? The ones you can search for and easily download with Democracy Miro? Now you can easily turn those files into files for viewing on your Cowon D2. Following the screencast I made, you can easily have tons of videos available to watch on the go.
The new build doesn’t only add that useful feature. There is also .mkv support! (Matroska isn’t supported by the D2) Not only has .flv support greatly enhanced Avidemux, but there is also crash detection and recovery support. Now if you make a mistake, you won’t lose all your options! It just keeps getting better.
Tips:
Save Custom video settings:
Want a tip for speeding up your Avidemux usage? You can save custom settings so that you don’t have to go through all the menus each time you load a video! Here’s how (From Doom9 forums, Wiki) SadaraX posted this wonderfully helpful information:
1) Open a video
2) Select the video codec you want (like x264) (In our case, we’ll use Xvid)
3) Configure codec with the options you want (No B frames, 320×240 or smaller…)
4) Save the file as a Project file somewhere….
5) Open that project file in a text editor (like vim, notepad, wordpad, etc)
6) Now you need to edit and remove whatever you do not want to be loaded as a preset
** You must leave the line that says “var app = new Avidemux();”
** If you want to keep the filters, leave the //** Filters ** section, if you want keep the video leave the //** Video Codec conf **, and so on.
7) Save the file in $HOME/.avidemux/custom with a .js as the file extention
This should spare people of the tedium of working through the file settings every time for similar files.
Append: (Joining files of similar types together)
If you download a video in many parts, perhaps a series of files you want to watch by the same person, use the “append” option. As long as the videos are the same size and format (and they should be if they all come from Youtube or most other online video sources) then you can add them together easily. After you append the files, just save it as one large .flv file. Then you can use Avidemux to transcode it at once, instead of as a bunch of individual files. This would be an ideal way to watch, say, “Chad Vader” as a movie instead of lots of short skits.
Turbo Mode: (When quality isn’t that important)
In testing the new .flv mode out, I used the “turbo” mode (available in the Configure, encoding options for XviD files). This is a single pass encode. This isn’t as small or as good of quality as the two pass encoding available, but it’s faster. I was able to encode files faster than real time and watch them immediately. I’m not sure how much faster they are, but the quality of most files from Youtube aren’t extremely high in the first place. Even if you do multiple passes, you probably won’t see a significant difference from the turbo mode single pass encoding.
Enjoy the new features of Avidemux!
