I'm thinking of create a Guide..

[godix]

Oh, I forgot one thing. If someone does happen to want a mindless 'follow this' guide then <a href="http://www.amvwiki.org/index.php/User_c ... AMVWiki</a> is the closest to useful method of that I've seen yet. At least it goes done to what's needed for individual shows rather than trying to present a universal script to be slapped on absolutely everything.

[Flint the Dwarf]

The problem is that by following the guide you will be wrong a lot of the time. For example, mindlessly using telecide and decimate because a guide told you to is fine right up to the point where you run into a progressive anime, PAL source, or the just plain fucked up DVD.

Yes, but this guide is for people who wouldn't get the jist on most of that from the tech guides anyway.

And, yes, I highly back that Wiki page but we need more scripts, damnit. I guess I'll try submitting my Millenium Actress script...

[Arigatomina]

Once you run into one of those then you have to know at least a bit of the theory behind it all to figure out how to deal with it.

One thing I love about 'step-by-step' guides is that many of them contain links to "read more" for subjects the person has trouble with. The av guide is the opposite - it gives all the 'more' with the actual steps buried somewhere in the middle. For the filters you were talking about, usually a person can see that following the 'stock' methods aren't getting the same results as it did with other sources. In that case, the person would click that 'read more about cleaning up footage' to find which part of the essay pertains to their problem. The detailed essays are accessed on a need to know basis, not a 'take everything and remember it all because someday you might need to know part of this.'

Ever do one of those writing assignments in school where you had to outline how to make a peanut butter sandwich? Did you explain what a butter knife is and what it's made of, how the way you hold it determines the evenness with which the peanut butter is spread, and why it's better to use the knife than your fingers to spread the peanut butter? Or did you say to "pick up the knife" and expect the reader to follow your instructions without asking why you're telling them to do that?

If you're writing for people who may eventually alternate between chunky and smooth, they will need to know why it's important to use a metal knife on chunky instead of a plastic one, in which case you can always write an appendix to go with the 'general' instructions. But to get that sandwidch made, you don't want to bury the "pick up the knife" step in the middle of a few hundred pages of explanation as to why and how the little bumps in wheat bread may complicate the spreading process more than white bread.

/An anecdote my mom likes to use - for an assignment like this she decided to tell how to drive to work. She wrote fifteen pages on how to get out the front door and ended up having to change the title to "how to leave the house in a calm and orderly fashion" ^_^;; She got an A for the depth and creativity, but she never got out of the driveway.

[x_rex30]

The problem is that by following the guide you will be wrong a lot of the time. For example, mindlessly using telecide and decimate because a guide told you to is fine right up to the point where you run into a progressive anime, PAL source, or the just plain fucked up DVD.

Yes, but this guide is for people who wouldn't get the jist on most of that from the tech guides anyway.

And, yes, I highly back that Wiki page but we need more scripts, damnit. I guess I'll try submitting my Millenium Actress script...

I highly agree. don't be shy having multiple script suggestions for 1 anime, and say who submitted each script submission.

[[Mike of the Desert]]

First of all, thanks to everyone for the feedback.

You all actually hit the point, especially on arguments like Avisynth I would say what is needed to minimally compress the video properly having the quality the nearest possible to the footage one. I would talk in the easiest way possible about what interlacing can really do and IF some things have to be done or not. Me, personally, using for the first times the av tech guide, I was doing again and again the same things, many, many times in a completely useless way, overwhelming the scrypt and creating strange solutions to reach a good encode.

Probably some people would even pass to the "next level" that would be exactly the tech guide we have now, even if that compared with my idea is by far more than the "next" level. The Tech guide we have is absolutely wonderful, it gives to you a huge knowledge about the video editing and everything that is correlated technically with it, the problem is that this can create confusion and many times an overwhelming of informations. Especially for people that only want to know how to do "that".

It would finally be in the end a particular F.A.Q., even if transformed into a guide, and if I can I would like also to include those hypertext about Arigatomia talked about. I'm extremely busy with school now but this is surely something I want to do. My guide would be also done on different "levels", my idea would be also to involve in every argument this scale:

- I only want to reach this objective
- - How can I work to do this in the way I want? What am I doing?
- - - And then the av tech guide we have here.

Even if this scale is done in an extremely bad way (thought just now) and probably even bad-spelled, the general idea is this one. And create this guide would be also a good way for me to re-read again completely the guide. Good. Again, thanks for everyone for the feedback, I really appreciate this. Don't expect nothing in the immediate future but I'm planning this in these days.

[trythil]

Why the hostility? Before the 'all things audio and video' guide was rewritten, people posted constantly about how it was full of information no one needs to know. Now it's full of even more information that most people don't need to know.

What exactly is in there that you "don't need to know"?

We have a guide on how to download videos. No where in that guide does it spend three pages discussing the theory behind bandwidth and internet connections. Why? Because it's not necessary to know that in order to click a button and download a video. Is it lazy to want a step by step guide that tells you what to do without explaining the theories behind why you should take each step? Sure, as lazy as it is to skim through a car manual to find out where your cruise control button is, instead of taking lessons from the manufacturer on why that button does what it does.

They are different situations. The download guide is a guide on the subject of downloading videos from this site, and I agree that discussing network theory would be excessive. Usage of the Internet, much like usage of a car, does not entail knowledge of internals.

When you make a video, however, you are, by choice or not, dealing with internals of digital and analog video. You are dealing with editing programs and their various quirks. (You're also dealing with all of the vidding meta-stuff, obviously, but that's a bit removed from the technical side of things.)

You're a couple more steps removed from pure bit (or wave) manipulation, but there's no technology staff behind you to handle the nitty-gritty work of footage capture, program administration, system administration, output compression, etc.

Now if all of those components always worked perfectly with the press of a button, we'd be fine. But they don't. Worse, specific anomalies tend to center around some construct in your project file or input for compression.

What's the easiest way to diagnose something like that?

Well, you could post a bunch of stuff on some forum and gradually get it down for that one specific situation. Or you could research, learn what's really going on, maybe post about that after you've learned something about the issue you're confronting, and come out of it knowing how to handle both that situation and related issues.

And, yes, I highly back that Wiki page but we need more scripts, damnit. I guess I'll try submitting my Millenium Actress script...

I highly agree. don't be shy having multiple script suggestions for 1 anime, and say who submitted each script submission.

As it happens, that guideline has been in the style guide for quite a while.

http://www.amvwiki.org/index.php/AMV:Style_guide

One thing I love about 'step-by-step' guides is that many of them contain links to "read more" for subjects the person has trouble with. The av guide is the opposite - it gives all the 'more' with the actual steps buried somewhere in the middle.

Really? If you go to the "Producing your AMV" section, you've skipped all the theory and have all the "pertinent" information at your fingertips.

The detailed essays are accessed on a need to know basis, not a 'take everything and remember it all because someday you might need to know part of this.'

Do you seriously do that?

Maybe it would be a good idea to explicitly encourage experimentation with EADFAG's contents, to try out and modify examples and such.

[madbunny]

I don't see what the big deal is. Lots of people have guides, Moonslayer, Vicbond, AbsoluteDestiny, and so on.

I'd say let him make his guide. It sounds like all he really wants to do is to put the steps down into a simple format like :
Step 1)XYZ.
Step2)XYZ
And so on... If it's a good, functional guide where is the loss?

What you Leet coders seem to forget sometimes is that when a person that has no idea what half of this stuff is looks at one of your huge scripts they get intimidated. Does that mean they should ignore the knowlege that's there? Of course not. If Michele remembers this frustration and wants to find some way to ease other people into the process, I say all for it.

[dj_ultima_the_great]

What you Leet coders seem to forget sometimes is that when a person that has no idea what half of this stuff is looks at one of your huge scripts they get intimidated. Does that mean they should ignore the knowlege that's there? Of course not. If Michele remembers this frustration and wants to find some way to ease other people into the process, I say all for it.

Thank you, madbunny. That's exactly what I've wanted to say since I first saw this thread's opponents. I'm getting sick of being a n00b equaling laziness. Sorry, some of us just don't get it. I've read through the guides several times, and you know what I've found? The introductory paragraph of any given section in those guides usually makes sense to me, and then the next paragraph has half a dozen technical terms in it. So much for comprehension when I don't know what the fuck half of the words mean.

Please, Michele, write this guide. I would use it in a heartbeat, regardless of what anyone else thinks. Then, if I can get your guide, it's very possible that I'd understand the normal AV Tech Guide. It's just a stepping stone, and one that I (and many others) would very much appreciate.


- Jen

[paizuri]

If you really feel so strongly about it, then go ahead and create a guide. No sense letting everyone pick it apart when it doesn't even exist yet. The existing guides are helpful, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. If your guide turns out to be helpful, then good. If not, then people probably won't use it. So go ahead and make it and see what happens.

[Scintilla]

... especially on arguments like Avisynth I would say what is needed to minimally compress the video properly having the quality the nearest possible to the footage one.

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