Guides and AMVapp Public Alpha/Beta Test

[Yogurtron]

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/ ... getb2.html
Luminance Filter: This is to increase brightness. Out of date an unnecessary.

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/ ... ssive.html
Title is "New Page"

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/ ... etb3a.html
Title is "New Page"

With NTSC footage this will also restore the framerate to 23.976fps whereas PAL will keep the its framerate of 25fps.

Doing searched on the doom9 forums for the above filters will give you clues as to how to attempt this kind of thing but it's not the kind of filtering that has been acheived with any amazing and easily duplicatable level of success.

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/ ... meth2.html
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/ ... h2a.html#3

When the two pages listed above point to "method 3", (in both pages), they point to videogetbmeth2a.html#3. (Yeah, the second one points to itself)

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/ ... h2.htmlThe default setting is 64mb but if you are usuing lots of scripts you may want to reduce this to avoid memory crashes.

Just pointing out random typos and whatnot (don't find anything wrong with the theory, so just trying to do what I can to help improve.

Very good work on these guides tho, AbsoluteDestiny, top notch.

[Khameleon808]

yes , very nicely done
I like how you included some live action hints as well for those of use who like to edit live action vids every now and then. I know its probably too much to ask but if anyone knows of anyone guide similar to this but more focused on live action . or could effortlessly put together some comprehensive tutorial for people that use live action . let me know, because as beautiful as these guides are for anime. there are still questions i have to get the maximum quality out of my live action vids as well such as prepping the vobs and other pre / post productions tricks. ill interrupt myself and wrap it up by thanking AD and recognizing what a very nice and in depth job he has done so far.

[Scintilla]

I'd just like to see some tips on taking care of dot crawl on <a href="http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtechbeta/avspostqual.html">the postprocessing page</a>, if it's not too much trouble, now that I know what it is and how ugly it can be... I mean, there is a whole section for de-rainbowing...

Damn you Central Park Media!!!

[AbsoluteDestiny]

I'd just like to see some tips on taking care of dot crawl on <a href="http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtechbeta/avspostqual.html">the postprocessing page</a>, if it's not too much trouble, now that I know what it is and how ugly it can be... I mean, there is a whole section for de-rainbowing...

Damn you Central Park Media!!!

There would be...

if there were many tools to remove dot crawl. Unfortunately there aren't.

[ErMaC]

The only viable way to remove dotcrawl I've found is with WarpSharp. A long time ago there was a plugin for VitualDub called the Wavelet Noise Reduction filter which could do filtering in a pseudo analog space, and thus get rid of dot crawl, but it was very slow and finicky, and it never could remove it properly without dramatically softening the rest of the picture.

[AbsoluteDestiny]

Well, GuavaComb can do it I *think* - but I dont really have many clips of this to test things with.

[Scintilla]

Tried GuavaComb after seeing the demo images on its webpage, but it doesn't seem to be working on my source. Don't know if this is just because I haven't found the right settings yet, or what.

WarpSharp was a little better, but a lot of the dots were still there.

[ErMaC]

WarpSharp isn't meant to really deal with the problem - I just found that often, due to the way it warps towards edges, it tends to help get rid of the problem, albeit not entirely. If you have a bunch of dot crawl on a solid surface, then it won't help, but if you have a source that has a bunch of crawl around edges it tends to help some.

Unfortunately analog noise like this is very hard to filter in the digital domain, because you can't really properly filter in an analog space without converting back and forth. It's very hard to mathematically model dot crawl in the digital domain so it's almost impossible to fix.

[Akai Rurouni]

I just read the CD Ripping page. Here are the possible issues (mostly typos) I found:

Well, in order to accurately extract audio (and rip dvds etc.) form a cd you really need aninterface called an ASPI layer.

form => from
aninterface => an interface

you can still install an ASPI layer using a program call ForceASPI

call => called

Drive tab: click "Autodetect Read Command"
Offset tab: Click "Detect read sample offset correction"

It doesn't really matter (I think) whether "click" is capitalized or not, but both "clicks" should be the same.


Now I'm going to be nit-picky for a moment - CD and CD-ROM should _technically_ always be captialized, since they're acronyms. It probably doesn't _really_ matter, and I won't really care if you don't fix this, but like I said, I'm being nit-picky.


Here's something that I'm not positive is an error - You use the word "normalisation" which I've always seen spelled "normalization" (and a cursory search on the web seemed to indicate that "normalization" is correct). However, if "normalisation" is a valid alternate spelling or is the British spelling, then nevermind.


And this is something you may choose to leave alone, but I'm going to point it out in case you didn't know -

put a spanner in the works

I don't think most Americans know what a "spanner" is. (Well, I had to look it up at least.) If you want to, you could say "wrench" (or something like that) and it should be understandable to Americans and Brits (and probably even Australians and Canadians, except those wacky French speaking ones). On the other hand, it's easy enough to understand what you're getting at, and even if someone doesn't understand it's not exactly the most critical phrase in the guide. So if you want to leave it, that's fine too. I just wasn't sure if you were aware that not everyone knows the word "spanner".
(Actually, I think it's kinda cool, but I doubt everyone will take the trouble to look up the word like I did...)

[ErMaC]

Spanner in the works is a British idiom, so saying put a Wrench in the works would be like saying "hold your equestrians."

And yes, the British like to use Normalisation, Analyse, Capitalise, etc.

I think at some point Ian and I talked about Normalis/zing all the spellings to be either British or American, but it's too much work. Color vs. Colour is a big stickler, too.

[Kalium]

All those extra vowels. I swear, the Brits are just trying to cheat at scrabble (no offense, AD).

[Akai Rurouni]

Spanner in the works is a British idiom, so saying put a Wrench in the works would be like saying "hold your equestrians."

Maybe my brain is making things up (it does that sometimes) but I thought I'd actually heard that expression in American English, excpet with "wrench" or "monkey wrench" or something like that...

Anyhow, it's not really important to understanding the guide anyway.

And yes, the British like to use Normalisation, Analyse, Capitalise, etc.

If that's all it is, then no problem.

I think at some point Ian and I talked about Normalis/zing all the spellings to be either British or American, but it's too much work. Color vs. Colour is a big stickler, too.

Honestly, I don't even notice the difference between color and colour anymore. It just a matter of seeing it enough times I guess.

[Akai Rurouni]

In the CD Ripping Section it says:

[optional] Press Alt+G to get the cd information from freedb.

However, if you have just installed EAC you need to enter your email address before you can do this.

Here's some instructions for entering that setting -

Go to EAC -> freedb / Database Options... (F12)
The window should open with the freedb tab selected (if not, select the freedb tab)
Enter your email address in the field labelled "Your E-Mail address"

Also I don't know if you want to tell them to click the "Get active freedb server list" button or not. I did, but I don't think you have to. (I'm still just using http://freedb.freedb.org:80/~cddb/cddb.cgi anyway.)

All other settings (including on the other tabs) can be the defaults, and the freedb feature should work fine. (Unless you have a proxy server or something.)

Hope this is helpful!
I'm doing all of this for the fist time, so I can keep an eye out for any other gotchas like this.

[Corran]

You can use a fake address also in case you are paranoid about that sorta thing... like me.

[klinky]

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/ ... deo4_2.htm

The AVI Container and the Early AVI codecs - Cinepak and Indeo Video

I think mentioning the AVI container and than Cinepak right after too closely relates AVI to cinepack/indeo. It makes AVI look bad when infact it is good, it being the dominant container in most AMVs now adays. Mainly thanks to XviD/HuffYUV.

When talking about Cinepak/Indeo there should be a big red "DO NOT USE THIS CODEC". Because it's worthless now adays.

I think you should have it divided in to :


AVI
<li>HuffYUV</li>
<li>XviD
<li>DivX
MPEG
<li>MPEG1
<li>MPEG2
Other
<li>Quicktime
<li>Real
<li>Ogg
<li>WMV
<li>Matroska</li>


Maybe have an intro at the top that explains what a container is and does. It's purpose. I know XviD/HuffYUV/DivX aren't AVI only techs, but they are most often found here. A disclaimer could be added such as "These are common video formats that can appear in other containers, they are not limited to AVI. However they are most commonly found within an AVI file."

Also I think more input needs to be given towards "Video Editing in Windows". While the whole guide tries to stay independant of an OS, except for the guides towards the end... %95 of the readership is going to be on a Windows OS. The tools and examples are all geared towards windows. I think more info needs to be put in about Video for Windows & DirectShow. What it is/does for the user/video app designer.

Another thing. Basic computer terminology. A little computer primer before people dive in to the guides. I see things sprinkled around. The little nugget about a byte holding up to 256 different values is not given until nine pages in to the guide under the YUV and RGB colorspace explanation.

Speaking of the colorspace explanation section, why does it have it's own section? There's one page under thre. It would better serve people if it were merged under 'Video Basics". I think it's more important and probably an easier subject to handle than IVTC is. Yet IVTC is first.


...that's all the nitpicking for now...