I've noticed the guides on this site, and tried read through them and follow their instructions, but they aren't very newbie friendly.
[slight rant]IMHO, a newbie guide doesn't need all of the history of the different codecs and containers, or even the mechanics behind how each one differs. I'd wager that most people just getting into AMV making probably wouldn't understand it anyway, let alone care. Beginner guides should be short, sweet, and to the point. Explain the bare minimum of a handful of formats' differences, which ones are useful in which situations, and maybe why if you really had to technical at some point, but any explanations of new terms should be concise or footnoted rather than woven into the how-to so that the reader can't tell what's relevant to what they are trying to do, and what's just background info that they don't need to worry about.
Think about it this way: does a book on drawing go into how the molecular structure of graphite differ between 2B and 4H? No. It'll say that 2B is soft and useful for making dark marks, while 4H is hard and good for making lighter ones. Because that's really all you need to know to use them.[/slight rant]
So basically, in the simplest, shortest way possible, what's a quick explanation of how to encode a high quality video, and perhaps how to encode one for making a smaller file, or a couple of other useful purposes. Short list of pros and cons of certain methods could also be welcome.
And if someone wouldn't mind terribly, specifically how to do these things with PiTiVi Video Editor on Ubuntu would be nice... But I'll certainly settle for just knowing my main request.
