Question about video source handling

[BlackEscaflowne]

I don't own many naime, but I do own a large collection of high-qualtiy AMVs..so basicly if I were to make an AMV; most of my sources would be from there.
Currently I only have Cyberlink Power Director 8

But the qustion is - how best to prepare for editing? I see two methods and I want to know which one is better.

1) use entire clips/amvs for video sources. Big memory usage, but easy. Also no qualtiy problems.

2) Cut out usefull bits (scenes) from larger sources and use those. It requires some pre-production work and those bits have to be re-encoded, so there may be some qualtiy loss.

[mirkosp]

Generally speaking, using other AMVs as AMV source is frowned upon, unless you have the other editor's permission ─ which sounds weird since you don't go to the anime creator asking for permission to make AMVs in the first place, but in a way makes sense once you realize that generally to edit an AMV you are expected to heavily edit/alter/modify the original and give credit by listing the source, whereas by recycling other AMVs you'd be slapping already done AMV editing effort and get credit for it with few efforts on your side.

As far as handling anime goes, you should Read <a href=http://www.a-m-v.org/guides/avtech31/>ErMaC & AbsoluteDestiny's Friendly AMV Guides</a>, that will help preserving quality while editing by virtue of using lossless clips for editing needs.

Keep in mind that once you have to encode the final video you will have to introduce a quality loss, but that's going to be true regardless of the source you use.

[BlackEscaflowne]

Ah..thanks. I just got my hands on Magix Movie Editor Pro and it is pwoerfull and great.

Thing is, I really don't have much talent or time to nurture great skill with video editing. But i liek ot belive I have one skill - and that is to always look and find ways to improve what's there. In other words I collect great AMV, but every once and awhile I run into an aMV that is "close to perfection".

It leaves me saying "wow. This is great. But THIS scene would work so much better here.".. and I'm left with a really irritating itch to fix that.
So there's no talking of talent from my side OR talking credit. At best tweaking of existing material.


Anywhoo..I gathered a bunch of tools and been going trough the tutorials.
So the first AMV I want to "improve" would be MEC Paradise:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr9G3V0HvNM
I can't seem to find it listed on this site..odd. Wanted to post a detail analysis and give feedback.

Anyway, seems it I can't convert it to UYL0 format... it doesn't pop up as option in VirtuaDub and installed the utvideo codec...odd.

[BlackEscaflowne]

More questions...

Since most of my video sources are AMV's and tus compressed and in different resolutions/framerates...

My base file is 1280x720, 29.970fps, YV12.
There are some the same size and some smaller.

Now, is it better to reduce the bigger ones or enlarge the smaller ones?

Also, is it even worth it to conver to uncompressed AVI for editing, given that some quality will probably be lost anyway?

[l33tmeatwad]

If you want them to not look like a hodgepodge of different videos, doing standard definition is probably best. As for the "different framerates" part; some editors choose to use the native framerate of the anime (which 99% of the time is 23.976fps), and others chose to let the software use the default 29.97fps, which more often than not results in choppy video. I would HIGHLY recommend using 23.976fps unless a majority of your base sources are 29.97fps. Also, you should be doing lossless AVI, not uncompressed.

[BlackEscaflowne]

You say 29.976 ...
my main is 29.970, so I guess that means I'll have to covert everything to 29.976. Ok, I can do that. Thank god for AviSynth.

But you say doing "standard definition". Does that mean "dont' re-size anything"?

Becuae the smallest video I was planign ot use (unlessI can find a higher qualtiy version) is 640x430.
Thre's a few great ones that are 352x240, but those are just too small.

[l33tmeatwad]

You say 29.976 ...
my main is 29.970, so I guess that means I'll have to covert everything to 29.976. Ok, I can do that. Thank god for AviSynth.

But you say doing "standard definition". Does that mean "dont' re-size anything"?

Becuae the smallest video I was planign ot use (unlessI can find a higher qualtiy version) is 640x430.
Thre's a few great ones that are 352x240, but those are just too small.

No, I said 23.976, as in close to 24, not close to 30. Most anime is actually 23.976fps and is interlaced on DVD to be 29.97fps and still maintain smooth playback. The 29.97 framerate is the NTSC standard, which is why a lot of editing software tends to default to that (since it is a known standard). I won't go into more details, but to make things short, most anime should be edited at that speed to avoid uneven adding of frames which will result in choppy footage. Also, by standard definition I mean 480p.

[BlackEscaflowne]

Ups..my mistake.

Looking ove all of my video source,s abotu half are 1280x720 and 23,769 and the other half is 1280x720 29,970.

Thing is, the 29,970 look OK - I didn't notice any chopines, but I guess it's best to convert it anyway.
Given that all are the same size, so Ineve need to re-size them?

Also, will chaning the framerate change the video duration? Will the audio and visuals go out of sync?

Lastly, I have PC and I jsut now installed everything on the second one. But for some reason it seems like AnySynth doesn't install properly. I don't get the shortcut to make scripts. I'm on Win 7, 64 bit, but my laptop was hte same nad everythig installed fine there. Anyone got any ideas?