by Kai Stromler » Tue Jan 07, 2003 2:50 pm
I'm not ordinarily a nice person, but I'll make an exception today. Better than your post being answered by someone who is normally nice and helpful, but makes an exception the other way.
You do not "have to" download anything. You just "want to rather than pay $50-$80 to get a decent DVD drive, and spend an hour or so reading guides".
This is a difficult and thankless hobby. "Fame" is hard to come by, and its value is both fleeting and questionable. If you are serious about making AMVs to the best of your potential, getting a DVD drive (or other capture hardware) is a good investment that will pay off in the long run. If you're not going to approach this project with dedication and a view to making it as good as you can, but as an impulse, in the hope that your efforts will get you noticed, you might want to re-think it.
I'm not casting any aspersions on you personally. For all I know, you could be a good person with best intentions, wanting to get into AMVs for creative exercise, or to scratch a mental itch. You very well might be. But asking for downloadable source of something commercially available, in a forum where such requests are against the posted rules, does not tend to give that impression.
Best of luck once you get a DVD player and figure out the guides,
--K