12. Getting Your Video
Moderator: Niotex
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Guides
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Overview
What all do you have to do?
Ok, so now you need to get your video footage into a format that you can edit. It may seem like a lot of steps, but once you learn everything and know how to do it, its possible to go through the entire process in a matter of minutes (not including time spent waiting on the computer to process things).
Here is the entire procedure that we will follow:
1) What source will you take your footage from?
If you are obtaining footage by a means other than DVD, follow the instructions in step 1 to figure out which step to go to next. Otherwise, continue to step 2.
2) Rip the DVD(s)
3) Make DGIndex project file(s) and AviSynth scripts
4) Work out the properties of your footage so you know what to do with it later.
5) Remove interlacing with IVTC or Deinterlacing and prepare the footage for progressive editing
6) (optional) crop and resize sources to work with one aspect ratio.
7) (optional) Clean up the footage before editing.
8) Decide how you are going to use the footage (as clips, directly through avs, or using proxys)
9) Set up your video editor using the correct project settings.
10) Edit your video - there's no guide on this, you have work out how to do it yourself. Read the manual of your editing program
11) Export a lossless master copy of your video and audio.
12) Post-processing and encoding.
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Guides
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Options for Video Sources
Getting Your Video
Before you start to collect the footage for you amv, you need to think about where you are going to get your footage from and how you are going to prepare it. This page is intended as a simple rundown of the options available for you to use and the pros and cons of each source.
DVDs - Plentiful, accessible, good quality and very useable. If you have an option to work from a DVD source then by all means do. Just make sure to buy legit DVDs and not bootlegs, because bootlegs look like crap. If your DVDs are in PAL format (mostly from Europe and Australia), then they probably look like crap. Try to get DVDs from North America if possible. If you are uncertain about the legality of an online stores's dvds, ask on the forums or read through the Pirate Anime FAQ to see if it's a bootleg or not. If it looks too good to be true (region 0, cheap, entire series crammed onto a small number of discs) then it's probably a bootleg and shouldn't be bought. To use DVDs as your video source, just check out the:
DVD Ripping Guide - Aside from Blu-ray, this is usually your best option if you want your amv to look nice.
Blu-Ray - If you have access to Blu-rays, it is definitely your best option. Nice, high-definition footage, square pixels, and it's usually progressive! Blu-ray guide.
Game footage - If you need to rip footage from a game, it can sometimes be rather complex because the video files can usually be pretty difficult to get at and convert to something usable. You will usually need specialized tools for it. Look in the forums for some individual guides on how to rip footage from certain platforms. Also check out the Various Media Formats Guide below, as it might be of some use. If all else fails, you can always just do it oldschool with a video capture card. This wont be as pretty as ripping the footage though.
Downloaded footage - No. I don't care what anyone says about the current quality of fansubs or anything like that, downloaded footage is almost always second grade. They've done a great job cleaning up the footage but even then it's often riddled with chroma noise from TV captures and so on. Many digisubs suffer from poor quality fades, blocking on gradients and all sorts of other issues you are not going to get on a DVD. If there happens to be some footage that you've downloaded that you really can't find officially (like, for instance, something which was never released on DVD) then it might be alright to use this method. If you just want to make an AMV to a brand new show which isn't available on DVD yet, you might want to just wait on it, as it usually doesn't take all THAT long for the DVDs to come out.
Various Media Formats Guide - You have some files on your computer you need to get video from, AVI, MPG, MP4, MKV, something along those lines. See how to use it here.
YouTube - Just stab yourself in the face.
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Guides
- Joined: Fri Oct 13, 2023 7:03 pm
Using Various Media Files for Footage
Various Media Formats Guide
It's been said over and over, but I can not stress it enough. PLEASE do not use this method to simply download fansubs and use them in place of buying the DVDs. Not only will fansubs have really crappy looking footage, but when you buy DVDs you support the creators of the anime! I've heard all the arguments that fansubs look just as good as DVDs, but forget it. I'm telling you, if you use fansubbed footage, it WILL look like crap. Even if you think it's acceptable, any person with an eye for quality will tell you otherwise.
AnimeMusicVideos.org does not endorse using illegally downloaded footage. Do not post any questions on the forum related to using such footage, as it is not tolerated.
Getting Started
Video footage can come in many formats. You might have MKV, MP4, OGM, MPG, AVI, WMV, or maybe even something else. The problem with all of these though, is that they probably aren't fit for editing because they aren't compressed with a codec that is suitable for editing. In order to fix this, we are going to load the files through AviSynth, and then convert them into editable AVI files, which will solve all of our problems. Fortunately, no matter what type of file you have, we can handle it the same way.
At this point, you should already be familiar with AviSynth. If not, make sure to get familiar with it before going on.
Loading your video in AviSynth
This is pretty straightforward. All we need to do is make an AviSynth script like so:
FFVideoSource("C:\yourfolder\yourfile.avi")
Of course, make sure to change the path and filename to that of the actual file you are trying to load.
Now, a few caveats that you need to be aware of: First off, your file wont have audio anymore. Secondly, whenever you load a video through FFVideoSource, it will create a cache file in the same folder that the video file resides in. If you delete this cache file, it will be created again anytime you load the avisynth script. The cache file serves as an index so you can seek around in the file properly.
If you happen to WANT the audio as well, then you can use either of the following:
FFCopyrightInfringement("C:\yourfolder\yourfile.avi")
DirectShowSource("C:\yourfolder\yourfile.avi")
The first one is preferred, but if it gives you problems, then try the second one instead.
Dealing with 120fps AVI files
I'm going to avoid going into the details of why anyone would make a 120fps AVI in the first place, and just tell you how to deal with it, in case you happen to have one. You need to download the avi_tc_package. Unzip the files and run the one called tc-GUI.exe. Start up this program and you will notice three boxes where you need to select files. In the first box, choose your 120fps AVI file. In the second box, choose a new filename to save the corrected file to. In the third box, you can fill in any name you wish to save this file to, as you wont need it anyways. Finally, hit the "run" button, and it will output your new, 29.97 fps AVI file. Now, load this file into avisynth just like I showed above.
Resizing and Changing the FPS of Your Footage
Sometimes your files may be encoded at the wrong resolution or aspect ratio, and it will need to be corrected. If you are planning to use multiple video sources in your AMV, you will also need to ensure that they are all the same resolution. Likewise, you will need to make sure all of your sources use the same framerate that you will specify in your editing software.
AssumeFPS(X)
And replace X with the framerate you want... You will probably want to use either AssumeFPS("ntsc_film") for 23.976 fps, or AssumeFPS("ntsc_video") for 29.97. While you could just type the numbers in instead, using these names for the fps will be more accurate.
Finally, you need to make sure your files are all resized properly. This is already explained quite well in the DVD guides, so I will direct you over there: Dealing with Aspect Ratios. Just to simplify though, you will probably just need to resize your footage to either a 4:3 resolution (640x480) or a 16:9 resolution (848x480, 640x352). Your footage also likely has a square pixel aspect ratio.
If your resizing is all fine, then I highly recommend that you clean up your footage.
And finally, once you are ready to move on, we will convert these files into editable AVIs in the next section.
Zarxrax - March 2010
If you will not be ripping DVDs, the next chapter is - 19. Using the Avisynth Files for Footage.