Hitokiri Shadow said:
I'd love to make some AMV's but unfortunately, I don't have the time or the programs to do so. What programs should I use (if i ever find the time)? Are they free on the internet or do I have to buy them?
I saw Scrapped Princess and then I heard a song that I think fits the series well, so I'd like to make an AMV.
Here are some of my favorite music videos (in no particular order):
Gundam Wing - Duel of Fates (Trance Remix)
Ceres - Desert Rose
Fushigi Yuugi - Dreams Come True
Evangelion - Bohemian Rhapsody
Dragon Ball Z - Kryptonite
Evangelion - The Black Knight (not a music video, but it's pretty darn funny)
Evangelion - Engel
Metal Gear Solid - Chop Suey
Gundam 08th MS Team - 10th Man Down
Gundam X - Eden
Rurouni Kenshin - Pieces
Rurouni Kenshin - From the Inside
Sailor Moon - Blue
The programs, ah the programs. Some are free, some aren't. Generally the commercial programs have more options and are more powerful overall, but on the downside they cost $300 or more, which needless to say, is out of most casual hobbyist's price ranges. Some of the free programs you can get are VirtualDub (I actually prefer VirtualDubMod, which is a heavily-adapted version that supports far more features and is available on SourceForge), Windows Movie Maker, which comes with all WinXP computers, and a few others that I can't remember at the moment.
In addition, it's especially necessary to have other tools at your disposal to adjust audio, do certain video encoding tasks that VirtualDub can't handle, or to get around the restrictions in output format Windows Movie Maker sets on you. This is probably my basic list of AMV editing tools that you can get for free or as demos that expire after a certain amount of time but can be renewed. Most of these are able to be found by running a Google or AOL Search:
VirtualDubMod 1.5.10 (available on SourceForge) - can convert between most video formats and compression types within AVI and similar files
dBPowerAmp Music Converter and optional input plugins
DivX 5 (either 5.1.1 off of the official website or 5.0.5 from oldversion.com; 5.0.5-IMO, the best version)
XviD (for videos that don't open using DivX 5.0.5 - DivX 5.1.1 can open them)
an MPEG-2 decoder (comes with DVD software, but can be found seperately)
TMPGEnc (a tool to prepare your videos for playback on a DVD player using the Video CD format-allows SVCD and DVD encoding for a limited time)
HuffYUV (I really can't remember the proper version number, 'cause one of the newer builds would cause problems, but this is the one to actually do editing with to avoid problems and preserve quality unless you actually have the HD space available to use Uncompressed video)
Nero Burning ROM (available as a demo, only burning program I've found that can burn Video CDs)
I really only advise against editing DivX or XviD compressed video in its native form because it can screw up your editing software's output when you try to export your video. Decode it to one that doesn't use the same video dynamics as those, such as HuffYUV or even Uncompressed video or Motion JPEG; do your editing; export the video and then convert back to DivX or XviD. This problem doesn't apply if you only use VirtualDub, but if Windows Movie Maker or a commercial program is used, it's better to be safe than sorry.
If you've got the time to check it out, at
www.animemusicvideos.org under 'Guides' there is one called 'AbsoluteDestiny & ErMaC's Technical Guides to All Things Audio and Video' that will give you the in-depth video terms and a basic concept of some of those video dynamics I was talking about. It's in pretty technical language but tries to do it in an easy-to-understand fashion. It took me a while (like around a year) to get used to the way video works, but it actually is
the guide to use to figure out just what a lot of those terms mean and why video files sometimes do the things they do when you watch them or try to edit them and how to fix certain things. Without that guide, it would've taken a lot longer than a year.
I've seen a few of those videos also. The Evangelion 'Engel' video is actually the video most other Eva action videos that have been made since strive to be, and that's about 5 years worth. It's one of my favorites also. The Black Knight and Bohemian Rhapsody videos are also a couple of my favorites as well. It's been a while since I saw the Fushigi Yuugi one, though.
Blessed-one said:
haven't seen a lot.. but the ones i have seen are pretty good. my favourite has to be FF8, but FF isn't really animation is it?
Actually, by AMV.org's standards, FF and similar anime-styled CG animation is actually considered as anime for catalog purposes.
