New to all of this

[ladubois]

I recently decided to get into the wonderful art that is AMV making after seeing the incredible work of Nostromo, and then going to my first convention (Otakon 2011) shortly after and seeing the amazing AMVs at the AMV contest.
So shortly after getting home, I went and found Lightworks, downloaded it, started messing around, and then realized that I had no idea what I'm doing.
It seemed that the next logical thing to do would be to join an AMV community, and see if I could get some help, even just in the form of nudges in the right direction.

I kind of like Lightworks, from what I've seen of it so far, but if someone earnestly suggests another program, then I'll look into it. Other than that, I'm all ears to the collective wisdom of this community.

[Zarxrax]

I was an amv editor for around 10 years, downloaded lightworks and played around with it for a few hours, and I also realized that I had no idea what I was doing :p So, dont feel bad about that.

Sadly, there is not really any decent free editing software out there. So if you are serious about getting into AMVs, you will probably need to buy something.
Sony vegas is one of the more popular applications, and the cheapest version of it can be obtained for about $50. Another popular one is Adobe premiere. There are lots of others out there, but these are the two most commonly used.

The actual process of editing an amv is pretty straightforward: you bring in some footage, you trim out a small piece of the footage, and then you put that piece wherever you want it to go. Chopping up and moving around... that's basically all there is to it. And then you can also add effects and stuff, but this has a large learning curve, so you probably wont be making awesome stuff overnight.

[ladubois]

lol I actually just meant that I didn't know what I was doing in general, but yeah Lightworks is particularly confounding. My uncle gave me an old copy of Premiere Pro 2 that he had lying around and never used, so I'm using that now. I believe I've figured out most of the controls and all. The only thing I'm having trouble with is importing video. I try converting what I have to something it supports, but the MPEGs it says are corrupt (though, I might try again) while the AVIs only import audio... -_-'

[HalOfBorg]

Look up "lossless codecs" like Lagarith and Ut. Convert the clips you want to use to one of those - they can be HUGE so clip out the parts you want first.
Edit with lossless - always less problems. Always.

[ladubois]

...How do I clip out the parts I want before I import it, though?

[HalOfBorg]

VirtualDub would be the software most often recommended here. Free as well.

[HalOfBorg]

Lagarith:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Lag ... _Codec.htm

Ut:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Ut_ ... _Suite.htm

VirtualDub:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/VirtualDub.htm

[ladubois]

Hmm... It would seem that VirtualDub doesn't like my converted AVIs either, and it doesn't open OGMs...
As an aside, I'm currently using Freemake Video Converter as my conversion tool. Any better suggestions, since I don't really like it much...

[BasharOfTheAges]

Read <a href=http://www.a-m-v.org/guides/avtech31/>ErMaC & AbsoluteDestiny's Friendly AMV Guides</a>?

[ladubois]

Yay! I think I've figured something out. I converted my computer to Ubuntu and am now using Pitivi. Not a particularly powerful program, true. But plenty for me to get started with. I might actually have my first AMV done by the end of the week. ^^