Originally Posted by raymor

Google will probably turn up several more GUI front ends to ffmpeg and mencoder.

As for the password, when you install you set up TWO passwords. One, you use
when you log in, and it gives you access to your personal files. That's what you
use for day to day work.

The other is the admin password, for a user called "root". That's used for system
admin, so anything you do in your ordinary work can't mess up the system, because
you have no access to the system level files without first using the second, "root"
password. That's one big reason that Linux, and Mac OSX which is almost the same
as Linux at the system level with different artwork, are considered so much more
secure than Windows. With any professional type system, anything other than
Windows, just because you're allowed to USE the sytem doesn't mean you're
allow to fuck up the system. Thus, no worries about viruses, browser security holes,
etc. - your browser, running as your user name, has no access to system level stuff
so you can't mess it up if you tried.

You'll notice that in Vista and Windows 7 Microsoft is starting to move in this
direction - they make you log in as "Administrator" before they show you the
control panel or make it easy to do certain other system level stuff. They are
getting users used to what it will look like when they have the same security that
other systems have had since the 1970s. Right now Windows just fakes it - you
can actually change any system stuff you want using any user name, they just
don't show you how, so you have to use a program other than "Control Panel"
(such as a virus). But the plan is that Windows 2013 will have the same separation
of user versus system that Linux, FreeBSD, Mac, etc. have.

Of course, Linux et al moved beyond that several years ago when the NSA built
SELinux and that what you have now, but Windows will eventually get there too,
probably sometime around 2018-2022 I'd bet.