NEW Guides and AmvApp BETA

[Mosc]

Now that you're working on this again, I'll go ahead and list the current problems I see with the guide and Zarx264gui.

- No matter what, you need to release a stable version of AMVapp soon. As long as the old version is recommended, there will be a lot of people using a version of FFDShow that's over 3 years old. Recommending people to tick off FFDShow during installation and redirect them to the CCCP homepage would help too.

- The advise against using Matroska is puzzling me. Correct, playing back Matroska files requires the installation of a splitter, but the same is true for MP4! Furthermore, people will still need to have proper video and audio decoders too, so the chances of them being able to playback MP4, but not Matroska, are pretty slim. There's exactly one advantage of MP4 I could name; better hardware compatibility, but even most hardware solutions have silly restrictions on levels and number of reference frames that cause 90% of the videos out there to not work without changing the stream or even re-encoding it. Matroska on the other hand has tons of advantages over MP4, which include, but are not limited to: support for Vorbis audio, support for lossless audio codecs like FLAC and WavPack, proper subtitle formats support and lower overhead. I can even see some use for advanced features like segment linking and editions. Saying that Matroska isn't suited for editing is true, but again, it applies to MP4 too. (Yes, I'm a Matroska fanboy.)

- Although TIVTC does a great job at automating IVTC, it still occasionally fails, especially on older material. I'm not expecting a full-fledged YATTA guide here, but a short section explaining overrides might be very helpful to those experiencing problems with bad matches.

- Opening videos with DirectShowSource is bad because it's not frame accurate. There are two very decent alternatives:

• DSS2: A DirectShowSource "clone" written by Haali that ensures frame accuracy. It doesn't load audio and it forces CFR, though.
• FFmpegSource: Does not rely on DirectShow so it can even be used by those silly VLC users out there. Should deliver equal results to DSS2 in most cases.

You might want to include one of these on the downloaded footage page.

- The page explaining all the video filters is outdated. Tons of new denoising filters have been released that do a better job than something like Deen. Other filters and scripts that might be worth a look at are AA (an anti-aliasing script) and gradfun2db (a banding remover; actually intended to be a playback filter, but works as a pre-encoding one too as long as you feed it lots of bits).

- Zarx264gui does not allow the use of adaptive quantization. AQ is intended to solve the problem of blocking appearing in dark, flat areas in the video plaguing a lot of x264 encodes. Both of the AQ methods out there, Haali's and Dark Shikari's, have not made it to the x264 SVN (yet), but either of them is practically essential to create transparent encodes.

- Some suggestions for quality presets:

• Insane: -b 16 --me tesa -m 7 -A all --8x8dct --direct auto -w --mixed-refs -r 16 -t 2 --b-pyramid --bime --merange 24 --no-fast-pskip --b-rdo (add --me-prepass if your x264 build supports it)
• Normal: -b 16 --me umh -m 6 -A all --8x8dct --direct auto -w --mixed-refs -r 8 -t 1 --b-pyramid --bime --merange 12
• Fast: -b 16 --me hex -m 3 -A i8x8,b8x8,p8x8 --8x8dct --direct auto -w --mixed-refs -r 4

B-frames is always set to 16 because it increases speed and efficiency; it's a win-win situation. I have no idea about the QuickTime preset because I could not care less about it. Note that "quality", in case of CQ and CRF, is not a very good label. With these rate control methods, the preset influences file size more than it does quality.

[Zarxrax]

I completely agree about needing to release a stable amvapp soon. It is a lot of work though, so its difficult. I will try to make it happen as soon as possible though.

I have released one of my own videos on matroska format, but the fact of the matter is, mp4 is a standard. MKV has been a failure except in the anime fansub community. For anime music videos, mkv offers no real advantage over mp4 in almost any case. Sure, people CAN use it, but I feel that it offers no practical purpose, thus I cant really recommend it.

As for ivtc, one of the scripts i provide basically ensures that everything will be completely deinterlaced. Maybe you get some blending and crap, but it will be deinterlaced. It is one of the most complicated portions of the guide for many people, and I really want to strive to make it simpler, not more complex. Most of the people using this guide are complete noobs, and most wouldn't be willing to go through a manual process anyways. I think manual overrised definitely have their purpose, but I think it is more advanced than the target audience of this guide would be concerned with.

Downloaded footage section cannot be included in the final guide, I will check into dss2 though.

I plan to revise the filters page again. I thought I had a small mention of gradfun2b somewhere near the bottom, but maybe not. Let me know if there are any other filters you think I should cover. I am a bit hesitant to include anything like fft3dfilter that requires putting files win the system folder, as it might make the installing/uninstalling process more complicated to work out (and delay any release of a final amvapp).

Thanks for your suggestions for x264 settings. As for adaptive quantization, dark shikari said of his method, "Its not particularly good at cartoons; I wouldn't use it on anime/cartoons."

[Mosc]

Yeah, MP4 is a standard. So is Matroska. Sure, not an industry standard, but that only has the possible advantage of better hardware support. And like I said, MP4 hardware support is currently mediocre at best, not to mention that Matroska players are available too. Many people that are into the AMV scene are likely to be quite active in the anime scene too, so most of them should be familiar with Matroska anyway because it's much more used than MP4 there. Matroska is also the container of choice for every high definition warez scene release out there, ignoring some random WMV releases.

Still, I think Matroska has tons of advantages, especially lossless audio would be a very welcome trend in media where audio is such a prominent feature. Oh well, if these so called "standards" are really that important to you there's not much I can do to convince you.

I see your point about IVTC. Just don't make it too simple; IVTC probably influences video quality more than anything else, so people should at least try to understand it.

I'm actually not that experienced with filters, but I like hqdn3d (just the spatial part), dfttest and RemoveGrain for denoising myself.

Dark Shikari did say his AQ doesn't work that well for anime, but some reports have stated the opposite. I can't confirm either of these statements because I really haven't tested his AQ that much. If you want to play it safe Haali's one is a good option though, I can confirm it works wonders on some sources even if it's somewhat inefficient.

[Nightshiver]

Alright, well here's an issue. The link for any of the /avtechbeta links don't work. Which means I cannot download the AMVapp V3 Beta. Which is not cool.

[mirkosp]

Well, I have uploaded the amvapp 3.0 beta installer here, for now... we still gotta wait zarx to solve the avtechbeta issue for the guide itself...

[mirkosp]

Ok, looks like dokidoki fixed it.
/useless double post

[Tiiscool]

Hi,

is it better to have premiere already installed, before installing AMVapp ?

[Tiiscool]

Hi,

I found a link that do not want to work
On this side:
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/ ... intro.html

Topic: Premiere AVS Import Plugin


Link to this side: http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/ ... meth2.html

[Zarxrax]

Yes, its better to have premiere installed first, otherwise the premiere plugin cant be installed by amvapp.
Thanks for letting me know about the link.

[Tiiscool]

Hi,

why is there nor order= or use of d2v= ?

TFM()
TDecimate()


I thought it should be this way ?

TFM(order =1) #for top field
TDecimate()