I just downloaded a trial version of VisualHub, a video converter for Macs.

I may need to convert some .wmv’s to other formats, and this program does that — but I think the program is worth its price ($23.32, there’s probably some story there but I don’t know what it is) just to see how the programmers are using humor in their documentation (and in the program itself).

My first clue was that the second page of the user manual was blank, except for one small-print phrase in the middle: “This page unintentionally left blank. Whoops.”

Already I love these guys. I’m looking forward to reading the manual for fun. And it doesn’t disappoint. Yes, it’s got screenshots and item-by-item descriptions of various functions, but it also has quotes from Back to the Future, Steve Jobs, and other sources (whether made up or not I haven’t bothered to check).

Plus there are gems like this concise, lucid explanation of the NTSC/PAL distinction:

There are two major television formats in the world. NTSC and PAL.

NTSC stands for “North American Television Standards Committee”, and as expected from the title, this format is used in North America. It is also the native format of Japan and northwest South America.

PAL stands for “Phase Alternating Line”, and as expected from the title, tells you absolutely nothing helpful, leaving you lost and confused. It’s the format used in the rest of the world, including Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and most of South America. People in Antarctica are too cold to watch TV.

I wish I could insert humor this seamlessly into technical verbiage.

And the hilarity continues. In the program itself, when I clicked on “advanced,” I got a dialog box with lots of, well, advanced options…and a small warning at the very top: “Don’t! You’ll screw it all up!”

When I pressed the button to start a video conversion, the button changed to “Cancel,” which is normal behavior…but when I left my cursor there for a few seconds, a tooltip appeared: “It sure is a tempting button to push, isn’t it?”

I’m sure there is more funny stuff in this program and its documentation (update: I just found that the first page of the user manual appendix has a full-color photo of an actual appendix. A little gross, but still funny). I’m looking forward to working with it some more.

But I’m not just saying “funny copy, yay!”

I’m saying that the humor is integral to my relationship with this software and its creators. Almost anyone could tack jokes onto a user manual, and the result could be mildly chuckleworthy or downright gag-inducing. With VisualHub, it seems clear that being funny isn’t an afterthought, and it comes naturally to these folks.

I get a certain feeling from looking at this piece of software and its instructions. Like, “This was written by real human beings.” An intuitive realization that if they had this much fun putting together a user interface, they must really love what they do. And people who really love what they do tend to do that thing well.

And there you have it. I already trust this product more, and trust its creators more, because they tickled my funnybone.