Any issues with using CGI footage for an AMV?

[Skysaurus]

I'm planning on making my first AMV using footage from a CGI cartoon (Beast Wars) and I was wondering if there's anything I should watch out for when I go to use the DVDs to make the AMV, technical issues or whatnot.

[post-it]

... CGI cartoon (Beast Wars) using DVDs ...

. CGI's are a little bit tricky to encode - beast wars, reboot, run-dim.

. The tricky part is "what size to make the Video Picture" ^_^ screen size.

[Skysaurus]

Any recommendations, or should I just go the "trial and error" route?

[post-it]

. My favorite format is 768 X 576 @ 23.97 fps with 48k stereo Audio @ 256k rate.
its clean, crisp, sharp and sounds like it came dirrectly from a Studio.
. My other format is 720 X 388 @ 23.97 fps with 48k stereo Audio @ 256k rate.
note: The Video's may look a little small when you play them back but the detail
is maintained ( and that's what were looking for - clean, crisp, sharp. )

. The guides will show you how to keep your encodes down below 4 meg per second.
Just have fun

[Scintilla]

@post-it: ... what's so "tricky" about what resolution to use? How is CGI any different from normal anime in this regard? And must I point out that the detail is NOT going to be maintained, and the video is NOT going to look "clean, crisp, and sharp", if the distro codec used isn't capable of it at the desired filesize? (You did say "to encode", so I can only assume you're talking about distro.)

And why would you resize to 768x576? Not only would a lot of people have problems playing such a video back without skipping, but that's also bigger than the native DVD resolution for both NTSC AND PAL.

@Skysaurus: As far as editing goes, set your project up to use whatever resolution the video is encoded at on the DVD (which should be 720x480 for NTSC or 720x576 for PAL). For distro, use a resolution that's 4:3 if your source is 4:3, or 16:9 if your source is widescreen.

Actually, just READBAG (if you haven't already), it explains it better:
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtechbeta/

[trythil]

As far as dimensions (i.e. screen size) is concerned, you can treat CG the same way you treat everything else.

The only reason I can think of resizing to 768x576 is that it is 4/3 in 1:1 PAR land. This, however, is dumb, as images of size 640x480, 512x384, etc (1) serves the same purpose, (2) doesn't look much worse when blown up to full screen, (3) saves you from having to stretch the image in one or two ways (depending on if you're using NTSC or PAL material), (4) contains fewer pixels, which contributes to smaller encode sizes, and (5) are easier for many computers to handle.

With CG, people tend to generate it directly at 29.97frames per second interlaced (for NTSC systems, 25fps for PAL), because computers can do that very easily. That is, there is often no telecine process involved, which means that you will have to deinterlace rather than inverse telecine. Sometimes you may get lucky and you'll find a progressive-frame stream on the DVD -- thus allowing you to skip deinterlacing/inverse telecining entirely -- but this is still rare in anime, except when concerning DVDs that are transfers from film.

If none of that made sense, go to the Guides link Scintilla posted.

[trythil]

Heh, wow, I made about as many grammatical and spelling errors as a typical post-it post.

If none of that made sense, first consult the guides that Scintilla linked to, and if it still doesn't make sense, let me know and I'll try to rewrite the post :P

[post-it]

. Well, to be honest, it should not matter what you are encoding:
Anime,
CGI,
the weather,
a Live TV moment and/or
a news cast!
( for my own reasons, when it comes to Anime, Bigger is Better ^_^ )

. but, seriously . . . Everything listed here should be encoded the SAME WAY!
------WHY ?
simple:
What you are encoding should be as Clean and Clear to watch as possible and
neither ANIME, CGI, News Cast's nor Commercails are specail.

. think about it:. what event could happen down your street
that should look fuzzy and/or distorted?. Practice encoding
something that happened, that your cam-corder was able to capture, and practice
making "that" encode to Mpeg or AVI; if you can make "it" look good, then your AMV's will look good.

[Scintilla]

. but, seriously . . . Everything listed here should be encoded the SAME WAY!

Well, not quite. I imagine that certain filters (only ones I can think of right now are msmooth and msharpen) wouldn't work terribly well on non-animated sources... and filtering's an important part of generating a clean encode.

[trythil]

[but, seriously . . . Everything listed here should be encoded the SAME WAY!
------WHY ?
simple:
What you are encoding should be as Clean and Clear to watch as possible and
neither ANIME, CGI, News Cast's nor Commercails are specail.

Oh, you can encode everything the same way. It's just that if you treat each encode on the basis of the content, it'll look better.