The worst piece of advice you've gotten about AMV making

[ngsilver]

Edit more!

Seriously, what kind of advice is that? All that's accomplished is releasing multiple gif videos onto the unsuspecting masses!

[Centurione]

"You follow music too much. Make cuts at most every 4 seconds" - rock music, seriously?
"Why are you doing this? You're better at physics. You're too young to edit, it's too difficult, just quit." - my father to a 13-year-old me.

[[madaraxD]]

"Don't edit [enter genre here], because no-one likes that."

LIES.

x2

[DriftRoot]

"If you want to cut out a character, just use the Lasso tool or the Magic Wand."

*keels over* Nooooooooo!!!!

[Nya-chan Production]

"If you want to cut out a character, just use the Lasso tool or the Magic Wand."

*keels over* Nooooooooo!!!!

Actually, if you feel like being extra picky and have an eye for it, polygonal lasso and 800%+ zoom are great for some tough details ;>

[lloyd9988]

"That was horrible, how long have you been editing?"

Me "14 years." At which point i could feel their testicles shrinking as they made excuses for saying that

This was good for a laugh.

Anyway, never got a bad piece of advice yet... just a bunch of "Fix this and you'll be good in my books" and positive encouragement...

[Hagaren Viper]

"It's ok but you've made so many videos using the same source that they all start to blend together. You're a good editor but you're starting to Nostromo on me...not saying you shouldn't edit with your favorite anime. It's just a shame to see talent go to waste."

That was on my second Soul Eater amv. Guess there's a one-time limit on a series?

[DriftRoot]

"If you want to cut out a character, just use the Lasso tool or the Magic Wand."

*keels over* Nooooooooo!!!!

Actually, if you feel like being extra picky and have an eye for it, polygonal lasso and 800%+ zoom are great for some tough details ;>

Yes...or with the brush tool, after you've used paths to establish the mask area. If I feel like being extra picky, which is usually always, I make touch ups to path-based layers masks in all sorts of ways. The short and sweet breakdown of what I do in those situations is as follows (someday the extended version may be made into a guide or, more likely, a forum post in hopes of stickying, I just haven't decided if it's overkill for most people ):

Spoiler :

1. Collect still images of all the frames you wish to mask, preferably in TIFF format.

2. Either collect a background still image and place it in the lowest level of your mask-to-be file OR create a black/white layer in this lowest position of your mask-to-be file. Save this file in PSD or TIFF format.

3. Use the pen tool to create your mask outlines, a.k.a. a workpath.

4. Create a selection from your path.

5. Enter Quick Mask Mode and use the Gaussian Blur filter to add a tiny bit of blur (.2 or .3 pixels) to your selection.

6. Create a mask from your selection.

7. Evaluate how clean your mask is, then decide whether to adjust your original paths and repeat steps 3-6 or move on to Step 8 and refine it by hand (if necessary, otherwise skip to Steps 9 or 12, but I highly recommend you do Step 8).

8. Use the brush tool to refine the edges of your mask, painting areas white to reveal more and black to conceal. Vary the size, opacity and feathering of your brush for best results.

Optional steps to add a cleaner-looking edge to whatever you’ve masked:
9. Create a selection from your mask and select a color that you want around the edges of the mask (most likely this will be black, as most anime has black outlines).

10. Create a new layer below your mask layer and fill it with that color. Since you had a selection area active, the only place the color should have appeared is within that area.

11. Add 1 pt. of Gaussian blur to this layer.

12. Evaluate your mask against either the background image or the white/black layers. Correcting problems may entail further refining your mask, then repeating steps 9-11 and/or adding (according to preference) heavier outlines around the mask.

13. Save your file as a TIFF or PSD, leaving the background image in place or turning off the visibility/deleting the white/black layers. In both cases, be sure the “Layers” option is selected in the save dialogue box. If you save as a TIFF file and you have no background image, be sure the “Save Transparency” option is selected in the second Save dialogue box.

14. Evaluate the results in your editing program or Adobe Bridge. Rinse and repeat for every frame.

[tuxedomarty]

"Don't use old animes because no one really cares and they're boring."

Now sing this: It's my amvvv, I cry if I want tooo, cry if I want toooo oh oh (sorry, Mondays are usually hard...)

Yeah! Old anime is the best!

"oh look, another instrumental amv with overused transitions with no point to it. Amazing stuff!"

:truestory:

Another one was that my AMVs are shit and that I should stop making them...

Honestly, some people are really harsh in their comments. When I try to say something bad about a video, I always say something good about it. Or if I really don't like it, I don't comment.
I don't like when people are harsh and rude.
I'm always honest, I say what's in my mind, but there's a limit.
Another thing I don't like is when people put a dislike only for bitching... Because they're jealous or they simply don't like you.
Where are we going to go when maturity of some people is so low?
Luckyly, I don't care about others and I usually only care about MY opinion or my friend's opinions. But some people aren't like me and it's not nice when other people try to put them down.
I'd like to tell them to grow up.

I agree all the way

"don't use WMM, use a REAL program"

it's not the program, it's what YOU can do with it.

Very true. I know a few people who have made some awesome stuff with WMM.

[AMV_4000]

"You should be an amv editor..."