by Red Wolf » Tue Aug 20, 2002 9:27 am
While I'm prefering MPEG-1s I will certainly be happy to take a look at the AVIs. My concern, being a Mac guy, was universal access to all the videos. Shoot me an email letting me know which videos you would like (and where they are if not on your web page) on the CD and I'll see what I can do. I'm probably going to move to a double CD set so I can get more videos from submitters out there.
As for the original topic here's an update.
As I said, I have done DVD ripping and MPEG-1 encoding for AMV videos in the past with no problem. Those were using DVDs set to standard TV aspect ratio. I ripped the files, converted them to DV stream (required for the editor) and editing them using iMovie. I exported out using a commercial VCD plug-in and got good (though not great) results. iMovie doesn't support 16:9 aspect ratio so I was going to use this video to learn Final Cut Pro.
I extracted the DVD like any other. I then tried decoding it so it would keep the ratio and de-interlace. That sucked so I simply ripped the video and resized it without a set aspect ratio. That sucked. I finally just ripped it as if it was a 4:3 DVD and edited and compressed it in iMovie just like I have done in the past. That should have looked fine except for the skinny anime characters but that sucked. Frankly I'm at a loss as to whether the problem is the decoder (I've used two different ones for the Mac) and/or Final Cut Pro (I can't see to set it to understand I want the rendered video to stay the same size as the original import file). I'm sure the problem is me and I'm also sure a fellow AMV creator with FCP and widescreen experience could solve the problem in one post but alas, I do not see that happening. For now I've put the experiementing aside since I need to finish getting the AWA CD together by September and I have the next couple of weekends planned.