Official User Guides and Manuals for Free Media Software

Every major free media program has an official manual, and most are free to read online or download - here is where to find each one.

Ink and wash drawing of software manuals on a shelf, one open to sketches of a media player and a sound wave, titled User Guides and Manuals

Every guide below comes straight from the program's own developers, so it matches the version you install today.

Each row shows the official manual, whether it is online or a download, and where to get the program itself.

This page used to list guides from the 2000s, so we replaced them with manuals that are kept up to date.

Media Players

Program	Official guide	Format
VLC Media Player	VLC User Documentation	Online, desktop and mobile
Kodi	Kodi Wiki	Online

Converting and Encoding

Program	Official guide	Format
HandBrake	HandBrake Documentation	Online, English and German
FFmpeg	FFmpeg Documentation	Online
MKVToolNix	MKVToolNix Documentation	Online

Audio Editing

Program	Official guide	Format
Audacity	Audacity Manual	Online
REAPER	REAPER User Guide	Free PDF download

Video Editing and Recording

Program	Official guide	Format
DaVinci Resolve	DaVinci Resolve Training Books	Free PDF downloads
OBS Studio	OBS Studio Knowledge Base	Online

New to OBS? Start with its official Quick Start Guide, which takes you from first launch to your first recording.

Which Ones You Can Download

Two of these guides come as proper downloads. The REAPER User Guide is a single PDF of over 400 pages, and Blackmagic Design offers six free PDF training books for DaVinci Resolve, from a beginner's guide to colour grading and audio.

The rest are online, but you can keep any page for offline reading - see the tips below.

Getting the Most From a Manual

Match the version. Official manuals follow the newest release, so menus can differ if you run an older copy.
Save pages for offline. Press Ctrl+P in your browser and choose Save as PDF to keep any online page.
Search instead of scrolling. Press Ctrl+F on any manual page to jump straight to a setting or error message.

Looking for the Old Guides?

Earlier versions of this page linked guides for DivX 5, Media Player Classic, the Xvid codec and Dr. DivX. Those programs are discontinued or have changed beyond recognition, so the guides no longer match anything you can install.

Quick questions

Are these manuals free?

Yes. Every guide on this page is published free by the program's own developers, whether you read it online or download it as a PDF.

Is there a VLC user guide PDF?

Not an official current one. The VLC User Documentation is online only, and the old VLC PDFs you may find elsewhere date from the early 2000s, so save the pages you need as PDF from your browser instead.

Which of these manuals can I download?

The REAPER User Guide is a single PDF of over 400 pages, and Blackmagic Design offers six free PDF training books for DaVinci Resolve. The rest are online, and any page can be saved as PDF.

What happened to the old DivX and Media Player Classic guides?

They covered versions from the mid-2000s that are discontinued or have changed beyond recognition, so they no longer match anything you can install. We replaced them with manuals that are kept up to date.