Cephas wrote:I've considered making an AMV, but I have my reservations.
If AMV'ing is anything like converting a DVD into a (S)VCD, count me out. It took me maaaany hours to encode a DVD into a usable MPEG, and I had to do it over again because for some reason, it didn't encode the whole thing despite getting the frames right--when watching the MPEG, it gets "cut off" in the middle and starts playing a part closer to the beginning so the first bits of video you saw were completely useless. Hard to understand, but....
So, Orange Kitty, does AMV'ing take hundreds of hours + trial and error? Or am I just using all the wrong equipment? I used DVDx.
o.O Haven't used DVDx, and from your experience I don't think I want to lol
I use Smartripper to rip, DVD2AVI to convert, and TMPEG to encode to mpeg. It usually takes only a couple hours tops. The encoding to mpeg takes the LONGEST
http://www.doom9.net has guides that will guide you through the process. Plus, when making an AMV, you don't have to rip the entire dvd (unless you want to), you just have to rip the scenes that you want. And you probably don't want to convert to mpeg for editing. You'll leave it as an uncompressed avi.
Personally, I usually capture my scenes through my DV 500 (
http://www.pinnaclesys.com ) capture card. I bought that for my pc before I got my mac. The process of getting the scenes onto my computer is faster capturing than the ripping process. Even though ripping a dvd will give you higher quality scenes, the slight generation loss in capturing doesn't matter to me.
Bottom line, Ripping can get very confusing but you can reach a higher quality end result (and it's cheaper than buying a capture card).
Capture cards let you rip anything analog (like from your vcr or s-video from your dvd player), it's quicker and depending on the card, will allow some Real Time effects
No, AMVing shouldn't take hundreds of hours. But when exporting the final product to a good file for web distribution, it can come down to trial and error.