I watched the final one you posted.
A few things I noticed:
0) Most importantly, read
EADFAG. This will help to make sense of the theory behind video, so you can learn what to do to make it the best looking it can be. If you don't understand something in it, read it again, see if it sinks in, and then ask in the
General Video or
Video Software Help section if it doesn't.
1) Crop out the subtitles if you insist on using the source file that you are (if within your means, get the American - or astoundingly better Japanese Renewal edition - DVD and rip the footage from that)
2) Don't use DivX source files to edit your video. Decode them with
VirtualDubMod (make sure to get the latest bugfix as well, if you want to use 1.5.10.1; the bugfix versions are further down the page and require that you download the main version and unpack it beforehand, as the bugfix only replaces the main .exe) and/or
AVISynth first if you must use them. This eradicates the nasty DivX logo that appears (also make sure that you've set DivX to not display the logo as well). Both VirtualDubMod and AVISynth are included in the
AMVapp.
If you're using Windows Movie Maker, use this guide to help prepare your footage:
http://www.aquilinestudios.org/wmm2guide.html
3) If you're using Windows Movie Maker, export as DV-AVI. A guide on how to do this is here:
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/ ... xport.html
If you don't use Windows Movie Maker, make sure to export your video from the editor as an AVI, in either a lossless format (like HuffYUV or Lagarith) or Uncompressed. This will take up a lot of hard drive space, but the next step makes it smaller.
4) After exporting as DV-AVI (or AVI, if your editor supports it), visual quality could be much improved and filesize kept small by using a better compression method, such as XviD (a guide for compressing to XviD is available here:
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech/xvid.html
Filesize can similarly be improved if you use MP3 at a reasonable bitrate (128-192kbps is the norm for most videos, and typically doesn't affect the quality as much as a WMV encode does).
5) Use shorter clips - many of them were on screen for too long. Try to tone up the lipsyncing, even if it means going in and editing frame-by-frame.
6) Try to keep the video's plot consistent. To be honest, it looked near completely random, even though some scenes were clearly lyric synced. This can seriously boost the video's success even if the visual quality is less than perfect.
))