Hi, I have done a weeks cramming and read all relevant parts of "the film makers handbook" and a ton of wikipedia stuff. I am working on a mini manual which explains:
the history of some of the technical settings you are offered, such as frames per second,
the meaning of words such as "video format" and "file format", "wrapper" and "codec" (and standards such as mpeg-4)
I will also make a "free software workflow" using kdenlive as my NLE, this will begin with suggesting things like libreoffice and celtix for pre-production and end with creative commons licences and "made with freesoftware" stamps in the distribution section.
While I was reading, I began to see that much terminology blurs. For example the word codec is often used to talk about a standard like mpeg, the word file format, is often used to refer to the wrapper, the word video format is often used to refer to the file format etc. Some of this is caused by this new generation of cameras producing mp4 and h264 files, some is just for simplicity or from lack of understanding.
Anyway, I started work on a diagram to try and explain some this this. It's probably very nerdy and wont be to everyone's taste, but I would reeeeally value feedback from other nerdy people :D
I haven't worked on my spelling or the presentation yet, being dyslexic, i am sure there are mistakes - its just the content I am looking at for now.
https://owncube.com/public.php?service=files&token=0aaac60c91599da147948... [2]
Links:
[1] http://kdenlive.org/forum/contribution-forums/writing-documentation
[2] https://owncube.com/public.php?service=files&token=0aaac60c91599da147948504636529c8e58018d6&file=/Diagram1.pdf