Glossary
187 terms across frames and time, codecs, picture, colour, sound, editing craft and delivery. Each one says what it changes about your work rather than what a standards body calls it. Searchable.
Audio and Video
Reference and teaching material for people making things: what the vocabulary means, how the craft works, and two pieces of software for doing it. Written for someone who knows what they want the finished piece to look like and has been away from production long enough that the words have gone cold.
Craft and Theory
10 chapters covering frame rates, what is inside a video file, framing, colour, loudness, voice, cutting, transitions, on screen text and delivery. They stand on their own and do not need the software.
AVPrep3 Help
16 articles on the timeline editor: the window, bringing media in, cutting, tracks, transitions, titles, sound, captions, the seven tools, exporting, and what to do when something goes wrong.
AVPrep2 Help
17 articles on the batch preparation tool: modes and views, clipping, splitting, combining, converting, the composite builder, captions, overlays, effects, metadata and batch runs.
AVPrep Downloads
Two free tools for Windows. AVPrep2 prepares and converts footage in batches. AVPrep3 is a timeline editor. Both run from a folder without installing and write nothing to your system.
Start with a chapter
Frames, time, and why the numbers are strange
Frame rates, timecode, and the historical accidents that still cost people a day of work.
What is actually inside a video file
Containers, codecs, bitrate, and why two files with the same extension behave nothing alike.
Size, shape, and where to put the subject
Resolution, aspect ratio, vertical video, safe areas, and the composition rules worth keeping.
Why your export looks different from your edit
Levels, gamma, colour space, and the single mismatch behind most washed out exports.
Levels, headroom, and loudness
dBFS, LUFS, true peak, and why mastering louder than the platform target gains you nothing.
Making a voice sound like a voice
EQ, noise, sibilance, music beds and ducking, in the order that actually works.
When to cut, and why most cuts fail
Continuity, motivation, jump cuts, B roll, and pacing that does not put people to sleep.
What a transition says
Why the cut is the default, what a dissolve means, and why your crossfade needs frames you may not have.
Text people can actually read
Titles, lower thirds, captions, and why most social video is watched with the sound off.
Getting it out the door
Export settings, platform behaviour, what to archive, and the checks worth running before you publish.