I'm thinking of create a Guide..

[[Mike of the Desert]]

It would be something different from the others. I was thinking about create a "General" guide for Amvs for:
-Video and Audio Compression/Encoding
-Importing footage on programs in the best way, or take footage from DVDs
-General Tips for evade from errors counting on personal experience

Espeically for noobs. For people who found the main site guide too "technical" and complex, and that are been too "lazy" (or scared) to found the time to really understand it. People that probably never heard about how to encode or to import videos in the right way, pre-working or uncompressing. I would NOT use too technical terms, and I would try to be the simplest possible in all the cvategories, trying also to don't be too much long.

What you think about this? I would know your comments.

-Mike-

[[Mike of the Desert]]

Oh man. Sorry for the typing errors.
Oh, and I forgot: Since my first language is Italian, I would ask to someone to test this guide especially for correct grammar - typing errors. Sorry again for the mistakes of my first post, it's something I hate, deeply.

[trythil]

The reason why the guides are "technical" is because (hold on) THOSE SUBJECTS YOU PLAN TO ADDRESS ARE SIMPLY NONTRIVIAL, and there's really only so far you can simplify before you start feeding people garbage.

The existing guides are already at that point, in my opinion, though I'd love to hear just what you think is so difficult about them.

[[Mike of the Desert]]

Calm down! Please..

Is just that I saw that some people (many people), are scared with the huge amount of informations that the main guide, too much informations and things to study and understand. Me too I got scared at the beginning, but I was decided to understand and study it and so I have done. That guide is PERFECT. My idea was creating a "Step0" for then read it. As I said, for "lazy n00bs"

Please, mine is not an attack, calm down!

[trythil]

Is just that I saw that some people (many people), are scared with the huge amount of informations that the main guide, too much informations and things to study and understand. Me too I got scared at the beginning, but I was decided to understand and study it and so I have done. That guide is PERFECT. My idea was creating a "Step0" for then read it. As I said, for "lazy n00bs"

So what is the problem with encouraging others to "stick with it"?

I see no merit in encouraging slothful tendencies. If you could show me what good is in pandering to laziness, I'd like to see it.

[[Mike of the Desert]]

I see no merit in encouraging slothful tendencies. If you could show me what good is in pandering to laziness, I'd like to see it.

It's a good point, since in my opinion.. There's NOTHING good in pandering in laziness, I quite hate people like that. :S Mmm.. We'll see, probably when I'll have time I'll anyway do this. I firstly thought to do this since I remember the fear I had the first time I opened the total main guide.

[godix]

Do me a favor. Somewhere in your guide make a HUGE deal about how all videos made by the guide should have 'TVS' at the start of the filename. That way anyone browsing through the videos can see at a glance that here is a video made by someone mindless following a guide with no thought or knowledge of their own. In other words, here is a video that just crys out 'This Video Sucks' (what else would TVS stand for?). It'd certainly make skimming through the announcement forum easier at least.

[Arigatomina]

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.

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.

I'm not a particularly stupid person, but it took me over a month to cut through the old 'audio video' guide and separate the actual steps to be taken from four page lectures on why that step should be taken. Since they redid it (adding on another twenty or so pages), I can't even read it. It used to be I could recommend a person to read the guide, and then help them find the actual steps buried in all that text. I can't recommend something I can't make heads or tails of. I'm stuck trying to remember the steps I cut out from the old version, and my memory has never been that good.

I'm all for a cribnote "these are the steps the guide is writing essays about" guide. If Michele can actually read the current guide and identify those steps, then I for one would appreciate a copy.

Tips and hints on actually *editing* the video is different, we have 'how to make an action vid' guides and the like. I'd rather no one told anyone how to make a video. Teach them to gather and prepare the audio and video and how to compress the final project, but leave them to experiment their way through the editing process. It's more creative that way.

/note that I haven't read vicbond's new guide because I can't view pdf files and they *still* haven't put up a web version on the guide page

[Flint the Dwarf]

You can get Adobe Reader here for free and it will allow you to read .pdf files. I don't know how good Vic's guide is, though, because I haven't read it.

I would personally like to see how Michele can make a simpler guide. I understand the reasoning behind the depth in the technical guide, but even I found it much harder to find what I was looking for in this new one, and I had pretty much memorized the old guide. Granted, the new guide helped me understand quite a bit more about video, but I didn't need most of that knowledge. The hardest thing I find with making a video is getting the correct aspect ratio. I read over various parts of the guide for a few hours, and still didn't know what I should add to the avisynth script.

There's no harm in letting Michele try to make a simpler guide. It might encourage laziness (meaning that some new editors might go directly to his guide rather than the larger, more comprehensive one) but I think there's a good chance many editors will be able to get their ideas onto video rather than getting frustrated or intimidated by the tech guides. As godix says, that might mean a few more amateur videos, but I think, at this point, we're all used to it and have our own methods for finding videos.

[godix]

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. 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. Similarly much of the pre/post processing can't be mindlessly followed. Not everything needs sharpening, derainbowing, smoothing, color correcting, etc. and applying one of those when it isn't needed will give worse results than doing nothing. Unfortuantely there isn't a universal 'Run this script and it'll look great' method for every single anime dvd out there and lacking that the best you can do is explain what's going on and what the various tools avalable can do.