Re: need a little guidance here…

[mirkosp]

[MOD258: The original author of this topic has been since OCB'd after being consistently proven to be a bot, as such the original post is missing. The posts that follow are replies to that.]

I think you should probably go back to step one. You seem to have learned things either wrong or a long time ago (latter looks more likely). Things have changed in the meantime, there are new programs and better ways to do the same things or avoid issues entirely. Specifically, for subs... well, for starters you're supposed to be buying your footage, but in the assumption that you're, e.g., a subscriber to crunchyroll and using a show that's on there, it'd be a nice thing to keep in mind that most shows around are actually softsubbed, so you can just hide the subs from your footage and call it a day (crunchyroll videos are encoded directly from high bitrate masters and doesn't even add logos on the video, so it's not like you'd be dealing with poor 2k3 hardsubbed tvrips).
Read <a href=http://www.a-m-v.org/guides/avtech31/>ErMaC & AbsoluteDestiny's Friendly AMV Guides Lovingly Overhauled Largely by Zarxrax</a>, as that's the closest to being an up-to-date guide-to-all-things for amvers. It is outdated itself too, but not as much as older things (I see amvapp3beta in the list, and that IS old, a few years older than amvapp 3.1, I believe).
Mostly you'd want to be using latest vdub (either 1.9.11 stable or 1.10.3 experimental is fine), latest avisynth (currently 2.6 alpha 4, which is what I suggest by now, though 2.5.8 is fine if you really really want to use a stable), and updated plugins (mostly ffvideosource from ffms2-2.18-rc1.7z as of this post, as well as lwlibavvideosource from L-SMASH-Works, which is at r593 right now, for 8bit video; other plugins aren't so much of a necessity nowadays with interlaced footage being somewhat rare as far as home video releases go, and the ones included in the plugins pack of the amvapp are fine for the job, in case); also do give a try to the latest zarxgui as well. All the theory and most other things from the avtech are still fine.

[AMVGuide]

Well, you could follow my Quick Steps if you wanted. (It's everything you need to know in 10 minutes).

Although if you've never been to AMVGuide before, I do suggest starting from the beginning. and checking out The Blog from time to time.
I think you'll find the information a bit easier to pick up than A&E's Technical Guides (aka the A/VTech Guide mirko linked above).
Plus there are Related Links to the A/VTech on every page if you need them.

Hope this helps

[HalOfBorg]

And FYI you can crop very easily in Sony Vegas.