The encoding guides may be to technical.

[James Sharp]

Maybe its because im sick as a dog right now.. but most of the encoding guides here make absolutely no sense at all to me..


I mean.. i read the entire page and i dont remember a damn thing except for

"virtual dub uses windows hacks"

and because of these things somthing happens with mulitple frames per frame thingimabobs and it throws your clip 1 or more frames outa sync....

Now im not an idiot.. and people will probably say that i should stop wanting everything to be handed to me..

I really dont want everything handed to me.. i just want to get the base of stuff taught to me before i have to dive into this kinda stuff..

For example.. a guide will say " the molecular structure of the egg is .66.55.4433221 and as such it has a resulting offset of .242.23.43, so if you wanted to make a green egg you only need to follow the few steps involved."

Now how the hell am i supposed to even understand such technicality.. when im having trouble just understanding what a damn egg is..

This example is of course a gross oversimplification.. but still i think you get the point.


is there a place that will take me from step one and teach me up..

because no offence to these guides on this forum.. but they are EXTREMELY technical.. and by that i mean in order to understand the guide.. you pretty much have to have the same knowledge as the guide writer..

so is there like an idiots guide to learning about video and audio compression.



The quote below is an example of what i mean... how many people can actually look at that on the first page of a toutorial and say "piece of cake honkee"

To simplify the command lines and to speed up the encoding with x264, follow these few steps.

1) Make a new folder in "C:\" called "enc"
2) Copy, extract or move "x264.exe" to "C:\enc"
3) Copy, extract or move "mp4box.exe" to "C:\enc"
4) If any AVIsynth processing is needed on your video, drop it into Virtualdub , process and export it as HuffYUV or Lagarith and place it in "C:\enc" as "video.avi"
5) Create a new AVIsynth script called "video.avs" in "C:\enc" containing the following:
avisource("video.avi")
converttoyv12()
6) Create a new text file called "enc.txt" in "C:\enc" (this will become the script for encoding)

[Orwell]

What guide is this?

[Purge]

thats not to hard to understand at all if you are familiar with the mentioned codes and avisynth (and the windows OS). That is all covered in "Read <a href=http://www.a-m-v.org/guides/avtech31/>ErMaC & AbsoluteDestiny's Friendly AMV Guides</a>'.

which is i guess the equivalent to a "idiots guide to learning about video and audio compression"

[James Sharp]

Although i agree that the guide you are referring to is extremely helpful..

I really doubt it is the kind "idiots guide" that i am needing.

For example..

If you open up the guide.. you will see a nice page with a ton of links.. lets take a moment to look over them..

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech/

Now lets click on Television Basics:

Television Video Summary:

standard frame rate is 29.97

NTSC picture is 720x480

Digital Video Summary

Digital video is 1's and 0's

There are two types of color for digital video.. RBG and YUV

Monitors have square pixels and televisions have pixels witch are taller than they are wide.

regular televisions are 4:3 and widescreen is 16:9
-----------------------------------------------------------

Now this is a small summary of the info on that first "basic television" page..

is this information useful... without a doubt this info is very useful..

But me as the reader is sitting here thinking.. yes i know know all this stuff.. how does it apply to the amv i want to create?

No one has made a guide yet that says... "For the most part this is what amv makers use as far as setting wise for amv... here are these settings.. here is a nice guide on how these settings apply to video.. and here is how they apply to your video that you would like to make.."

For that matter no one has even written a guide and said.. " The info you have used on these guides is very useful to the project you plan to do.. and here is an explanation of why"

So i really am not intending to bash the guides or anything.. i really like them.. but to me as a new editor.. They just seem sorta like guides that tell about video.. but not how it relates to us.

and i was always told that if you cannot relate to what your trying to learn.. than you will have a much more difficult time learning..


I guess what im saying is.. i think we need a guide where people can go and read it.. and find a buncha info that makes them say "that would totally improve the video i want to do"

[Sereenie]

Have you read it further than that? Because it sounds to me like EARFAG *is* what you are looking for. Yes, its first section is the technical stuff. But the second one is about making vids, what to do, how to do it and why do it, with plenty of sample scripts, everything being neatly separated between audio and video. There's even a section on how to setup a project in various NLEs! It takes you by the hand from the beginning of a project till the final export.

What more do you need?

S.

[trythil]

But me as the reader is sitting here thinking.. yes i know know all this stuff.. how does it apply to the amv i want to create?

It makes it look better.

That's all.

No one has made a guide yet that says... "For the most part this is what amv makers use as far as setting wise for amv... here are these settings.. here is a nice guide on how these settings apply to video.. and here is how they apply to your video that you would like to make.."

That's precisely what EADFAG is. There are many variations on preparing and encoding video that are not discussed in EADFAG.

For that matter no one has even written a guide and said.. " The info you have used on these guides is very useful to the project you plan to do.. and here is an explanation of why"

The "why" is often a lot more complicated and wordy (and sometimes even more expensive) than the "this is way things are", so it was left out of EADFAG. I think the expectation was that people who wanted to know the "why" would do their own research.

You want to know why aspect ratios in digital video are the way they are? Check this out. You want to know about H.264? The answer is probably in here, but it'll cost you a pretty penny to look it up. This also works, but you may have to read a bit more to understand what you need to understand.

and i was always told that if you cannot relate to what your trying to learn.. than you will have a much more difficult time learning..

I hope you don't internalize everything you're told.

[Shazzy]

Nearly everything on that guide is useful for AMVs. What you have to remember is it revolves around one concept:

WE DON'T WANT UGLY AMVS.

For example:

SQUARE PIXELS: you have to know how to convert to square pixels or else all your images from DVDs are squished on your computer screen. SQUISHED FACES = UGLY AMVS.

ASPECT RATIO: keeping your images in the correct proportions. SQUISHED OR STRETCHED FACES = UGLY AMVS.

RGB AND YUV: Some programs don't support YUV, so you have to convert to RGB. Sometimes you have to switch between two programs in the middle of creating your AMV, and if you have to keep converting between the colorspaces, you lose quality. POOR QUALITY = UGLY AMVS.

TELECINE AND INTERLACING: Most television series are interlaced so they work on your TV. Your computer doesn't do interlacing so you see lots of lines. LINES IN YOUR VIDEO = UGLY AMVS.

EDITING CODECS: Some codecs maintain quality better than others. If you don't use a high quality codec, your videos will have compression artifacts. VISIBLE COMPRESSION ARTIFACTS = UGLY AMVS.

PREPROCESSING: What if the anime you bought wasn't encoded very well by the distributor? Sailor Moon looks like it was run through the dishwasher. Preprocessing with AviSynth cleans up those problems. DISHWASHER SOURCE = UGLY AMVS.

If you don't understand everything right now, have a little faith that what the guides are telling you really does matter. Preprocessing AMVs is NOT one-size-fits-all. Every series is a new kid in juvenile therapy waiting for you, the AMV creator slash social worker, to fix their problems.

[Zarxrax]

Pretty much all the stuff you are wondering about gets explained at some point or another through the guide. Also, note that there is a handy "glossary" page that actually defines many of the terms.

[Kalium]

These are complex technical issues. There is no "one size fits all" solution, and there is no good way to explain them in baby-talk. So buckle down and learn something, it won't kill you.

At least, I haven't heard of anyone dieing from it.

[James Sharp]

These are complex technical issues. There is no "one size fits all" solution, and there is no good way to explain them in baby-talk. So buckle down and learn something, it won't kill you.

At least, I haven't heard of anyone dieing from it.

While i respect your opinion. You have no right to assume the level of my intelligence as something that requires "baby talk"

I'm a firefighter for the forest service. I could sit here all day and write an overly technical guide about the physics of fire or how fire spreads or how topography and fuel types effect fire.

After reading it you would be like "what?"

But seeings how i know that my amount of occupational knowledge far surpasses many others. Than it would be very simple for me to explain fire to you and have you understand it in many other ways.

For example: The mark three fire service pump is a centrifical pump it pumps 300gpm at 200psi... the mark 3 pump is very prone cavitation and as such measures should be taken to prevent cavitation at anytime before running the pump.



Now can you tell me what you have gotten from that? Probably nothing because it is very technical.


I must apologize for going a little overboard here. but no one likes to be talked down to when they express the opinion that they have.

My main point is that some parts of the guides may be a little to technical for beginners. and that if so many people say Read <a href=http://www.a-m-v.org/guides/avtech31/>ErMaC & AbsoluteDestiny's Friendly AMV Guides</a> to every beginner that rolls into these forums. it may come off sounding a bit to elitist for some.

My point was if those guides are going to be considered the "guide of guides" a little input from myself is not such a bad thing.

now is that a reason to automatically assume that every aspect of my learning process is stunted?

So i kinda went off there. but ya. good news is. after reading over and over and over.. i finally have been able to commit some of the guides stuff to memory.