# Recoder — Help Guide Recoder is a minimal, user-friendly tool for batch video transcoding. This quick guide walks you through using the app. --- ## 🚀 Getting Started When you open Recoder, you’ll see a prompt inviting you to drop a video file or folder:  ### 📂 Dropping Files or Folders - You can drop **one video file** or **one folder** containing video files onto the app. - The folder can have subdirectories, but Recoder will **not** process files recursively. Only files in the dropped folder itself will be processed. - Non-video files will be ignored. ### 🔧 Preparing to Transcode After you drop a folder into Recoder, it will list all the video files it found:  - A blue **Transcode** button appears once the files are ready to process. - The **Clear icon** is always available — click it to cancel everything and reset the app if you're done or need to start over. - The **menu button** gives access to Preferences and Help. --- ## 🎬 Transcoding Click the Transcode button to start processing. While transcoding:  - The blue **Transcode** button is replaced by a **Pause** button, allowing you to temporarily stop the process. - If paused, the button changes to **Resume**, so you can continue when you're ready. - The **Clear button** can also be used during transcoding to cancel the process entirely and clear the current session. By default: - Transcoded files are saved into the same directory as the source, inside a subfolder named `{{source_folder_name}}-transcoded`. - File names remain the same as the originals but with a `.mov` extension. --- ### ⚙️ Preferences In Preferences, you can customize the single **output folder path** where transcoded files will be saved. This path controls both the folder’s location and name. You can use: - `{{source_folder_name}}` to reuse the original folder name - Relative paths like `../done/` - Absolute paths like `/mnt/Export/` - `~` to refer to your home directory - Simple names like `output` to create a folder inside the source folder - Any combination of the above, e.g. `../{{source_folder_name}}-dnxhd`  --- ## 💡 Notes - Make sure you have enough free space on your drive because both the original and transcoded files are kept, and transcoded files may be larger. --- If you need more help, check the [GitHub repository](https://github.com/jeena/recoder) or open an issue.