Official "This part of the guide SUCKS!" thread, 2

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 5:37 am

loganwolvy wrote:...any chances of making the guides more printer friendly? I guess I kind of prefer a hard copy over having to load up the website everytime I want to do some research.

~Q

I haven't tried printing the guides. Whats wrong with them that they dont work well with printers?

Prodigi · Post by **Prodigi** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 7:52 am

Zarxrax wrote:
loganwolvy wrote:...any chances of making the guides more printer friendly? I guess I kind of prefer a hard copy over having to load up the website everytime I want to do some research.

~Q
I haven't tried printing the guides. Whats wrong with them that they dont work well with printers?

I printed EADFAG just fine with my printer, and have my nice hardcopy in a file within easy access if i ever forget anything (although that rarely occurs anymore)

Also, VicBond's comes in a nice downloadable PDF that prints nicely too.

Corran · Post by **Corran** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 6:30 pm

I'm not sure why this was locked or if it was requested by Zarxrax. There was just one spammish post at the end so I removed it and am opening the thread...

x_rex30 · Post by **x_rex30** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 2:26 pm

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/ ... ogetb.html

3) VFAPI Conversion - this is the old method of doing things. It works but has 3 very big disadvantages. 1) It converts your footage to RGB which isn't good as DVD footage is YUV and you will have to convert (see here for why). 2) It is slow 3) You can only have 1 VFAPI file open at once otherwise they start reading from each other and crashing. This is bad. Don't use it, use this method:

This is wrong. I've opened over 20 vfapi files at once in Vegas before and it works just fine.. they DON'T start reading from each other and they DON'T start crashing. This part of the guide is misleading. DGIndex is updated and fixes these problems when you use avs files with vfapi. It has multiple instances and works just fine. What's true is that it does convert to RGB but not all that other bullshit that is mentioned in the guide. If you use it right Vfapi can be a very nice method to use when importing AVS files into your program. And by the way doesn't Premiere automatically convert files to RGB anyway.

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/ ... space.html

Premiere, and almost all video editing programs, work in RGB because it's easier to deal with mathematically. Premiere demands all incoming video be in RGB32 - or 24-bit color with 8-bit alpha channel, specifically, and will convert the YUV footage you give it.

If you could update the guide on Vfapi.. I don't know much that's wrong with it.. my past 6 videos have used the vfapi method and I've had a lot of praise with the visual quality for some of them.. One of the evangelion videos I made people have told me it's best quality they've ever seen in an evangelion video.. I've actually got that comment from quite a few people.. and guess what, I used Vfapi.. I don't think it's that big of a deal that it converts the video to RGB.

Scintilla · Post by **Scintilla** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 2:41 pm

Well yeah, you used DGVFAPI, which hadn't been developed at the time Absolute Destiny wrote that. In fact, he was one of the first ones to post about it when it was released. He just never updated the A/V guide.

x_rex30 · Post by **x_rex30** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 3:04 pm

Scintilla wrote:Well yeah, you used DGVFAPI, which hadn't been developed at the time Absolute Destiny wrote that. In fact, he was one of the first ones to post about it when it was released. He just never updated the A/V guide.

I understand that at the time that all holds true.. but it would be nice if someone deleted that info on that you shouldn't use it is all. I could scan the whole guide pretty quickly and I would of imagined that Zarx would of fixed that tid bit up by now.. deleting that or adding another line explaining about the DGVFAPI method or something. I just wonder why Zarx hasn't touched up that info. Isn't he doing all the updates? Just a quick fix on that information would be nice.. here's more info on the whole method that might be helpful.

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/v ... dec#760251

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 3:52 pm

x_rex30 wrote:
Scintilla wrote:Well yeah, you used DGVFAPI, which hadn't been developed at the time Absolute Destiny wrote that. In fact, he was one of the first ones to post about it when it was released. He just never updated the A/V guide.
I understand that at the time that all holds true.. but it would be nice if someone deleted that info on that you shouldn't use it is all. I could scan the whole guide pretty quickly and I would of imagined that Zarx would of fixed that tid bit up by now.. deleting that or adding another line explaining about the DGVFAPI method or something. I just wonder why Zarx hasn't touched up that info. Isn't he doing all the updates? Just a quick fix on that information would be nice.. here's more info on the whole method that might be helpful.

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/v ... dec#760251

I'm not updating the guide a little bit at a time. It will be one massive update, all at once.

x_rex30 · Post by **x_rex30** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 4:16 pm

Zarxrax wrote:I'm not updating the guide a little bit at a time. It will be one massive update, all at once.

Oh, sorry.. I wasn't thinking it would be one huge update. Come to think of it I didn't notice any changes in the guide.

NEway sorry about the misunderstanding.

AnicentEditor · Post by **AnicentEditor** » Mon Sep 18, 2006 12:04 am

As a newcomer to this site and Non-Linear Editing (but not a newcomer to editing as a profession/hobby), here is my take on the guides.

I apologize in advance if these topics have been brought up before, but I did not see this brought up in the past four pages.

.........

Pros: The guides are well-written full of relevant details such as the technical background on why certain things are the way they are and how various processes work.

I like the general tone of the actual writing in the guides. It has a non-nonsense approach, but is also friendly and non-condescending as well (I hate guides where the author(s) try too hard to be sarcastic, cute, or funny).

Cons: However, the problem I had with the guides the first time I read through them... And that I think you can see posted over and over again on this (the) General Video forum from beginners...

Is they are too overwhelming for a beginner in my opinion and this inevitably frustrates people and discourage them because I don't think the guides follow the K.I.S.S. principle very well as far as how they are organized which states:

K - Keep

I - It

S - Simple

S - Stupid

..........

I realize digital media and the ins-and-outs of things like PAR, DAR, Inverse Telecline, DGIndex, AviSynth, Frameserving, VOBs, Interlaced and Progressive frames et al. are important concepts and video authors should understand how these things work and thus, how to handle them in their own videos...

BUT I also think a lot of the technical details are not necessary in some of the steps because this is exactly what I mean when I say they are overwhelming when you first look at the guides and are specifically looking for the number one thing I believe a good 99.9% of beginning video authors are looking for whenever they are referred to the guides:

A) Where do I start?

...Or...

B) How can I make a music video with what I already have (source footage; editing program like WMM)?

...And...

C) If I can't do something, how do I go about fixing or adjusting my overall strategy?

The biggest thing I may suggest is the guides need a broad(er) table of contents which list the very basic steps and options of how one can go about making an pre-recorded (Anime; Live-Action) music video and then allow the user to drill-down into the gory details of whatever method they choose based on the source footage.

For example, I think there needs to be a basic page that lists the very basic steps one needs to take if they want to create a pre-recorded music video such as:

1) Get your source footage into your editing program
2) Export your finished music video
3) Post-Production and Compression for distribution

I know these seem like very simple concepts for those who have been doing this for years... But that is the point. They ARE simple concepts if you HAVE been making videos for years, but not if you just got into this yesterday.

Also, these very basic steps were finally cemented for me when someone on this board just summed up the process to another poster who had the very same problem with the guides and that is he/she couldn't get the very basic steps of what you need to do in order to start editing -- Which the above list outlines in three basic (broad) steps which is the first thing I think most aspiring video authors are looking for AND because it doesn't overwhelm them with techincal details yet.

That is my take on the guides so far.

As stated, they are good guides, but I think they need to be made more simple in the broader, more general sense in my opinion and some of the more technical aspects need to be left out if you take the broad-->detail (KISS) approach as no one likes to be overwhelmed with information when they are trying something new. Yes. They are going to make mistakes, but trying to prevent that from happening is sometimes the very thing which can confuse the person and even cause mistakes because they are being faced with information overload.

Jayn_Newell · Post by **Jayn_Newell** » Mon Sep 18, 2006 5:50 am

One thing I'd like to see would be a quick-reference for all the AviSynth filters mentioned, as well as resources if you want to experiment with others. Right now the different filters are scattered over different parts of the guide, making it hard to catch what all of them do and what the settings are. Also, someone brought up recently that while dot crawl is mentioned in the guide, it doesn't say how to remove it.