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-# dragoon
+# Dragoon
 
-Bit Goblin video transcoder
\ No newline at end of file
+The Bit Goblin video transcoder.
+
+## Building
+
+Currently this project is targeting Java 11 LTS and uses Maven to manage the software lifecycle. Thus, you must have a Java 11 JDK and Maven installed to build this project.
+
+*NOTE:* The targeted Java version will likely change to 17 LTS soon.
+
+### Ubuntu
+
+`sudo apt install openjdk-11-jdk maven`
+
+### Red Hat/Almalinux
+
+`sudo dnf install java-11-openjdk-devel maven`
+
+### Actually Building
+
+Now that the needed tools are installed, you should be able to build this project. To build a JAR file with it's dependencies included:
+
+`mvn clean compile assembly:single`
+
+Then you can run the transcoder:
+
+`java -jar target/Dragon-VERSION-jar-with-dependencies.jar`
+
+## Configuration
+
+If you were paying attention to Dragoon's output, you would have noticed that it failed with a complaint about not finding a configuration file. The location might move in the future or even be configurable, but for now you need to have a TOML file located at `~/.config/dragoon.toml` with at minimum the following contents:
+
+```toml
+# This example transcodes footage to DNxHD 1080p60 for use in video editors like DaVinci Resolve.
+[transcoder]
+repo_path = '~/videos' # location of the videos to transcode
+video_codec = 'dnxhd' # video codec to use
+video_format = 'scale=1920x1080,fps=60,format=yuv422p' # video format flag - this will be broken later into separate attributes
+video_profile = 'dnxhr_hq' # DNxHD has multiple presets for various video qualities
+audio_codec = 'pcm_s16le' # audio codec to use
+```