Call to Arms: AVTECH4

[Eake4]

I believe I can help with the second thing and reading from all the text previously written, I can tell this is gonna be really good and organized.

[mirkosp]

It's actually been really hard to organize so far, since I'm bad with these things. Having a lot of .html files with links back and forth is getting confusing...

[GloryQuestor]

Adding to what Zarxrax said, keep in mind this is thought out to be very BD oriented; DVDs are getting phased out, albeit slowly, and I'd really like to avoid encouraging people to download footage regularly.

Even if they are getting phased out slowly, I feel that we should always have a legacy guide available in every future iteration, for the following reasons:

- DVDs are going to be getting cheaper as stock sits unsold -- RightStuf would be the first to see profit in a DVD clearance market when the time comes, and Amazon is already deep cutting their prices on anime DVDs.
- There are too many people out there who still have a large DVD library and do not want to spend vast amounts of money they don't have to replace them with BDs. Just isn't going to happen.
- What if the BD market eventually fails? I know a lot of people who only buy BDs if the DVDs aren't available separately (bundle packs). Sure, they can tout that they're selling their BDs, but they're probably deluding themselves.
- Learning about (mostly crapitude) DVD production is an educational experience for budding audio/visual majors in college who might complain about how bad BDs are done someday.

That just my 2¢ on it, anyway.

[BasharOfTheAges]

The BD market won't fail because a few backwards people don't see the benefit of technological progress; it'll fail with the shift to digital-only availability that will remove all perceived fair-use rights of ownership and transition this entire hobby to pirate-only source acquisition.

[mirkosp]

The guide is STILL going to talk about DVDs. Just that BDs will be covered a lot better than the current "hey if you have a BD you can try DSS2 and it might work".
Mostly because the things one need to know for BDs are MORE than the things are needed to know for DVDs (but most of the time it's unnecessary to know them since BDs are generally in a better shape than DVDs).
But still, the guide will have to talk about deinterlacing and all, since interlaced content can be found on BDs.

[Phantasmagoriat]

So, I was going to post this earlier, but there were a bunch of things I needed to do first. Anyway:


http://amvguide.blogspot.ca/2012/08/about.html

If you would like to use the structure of AMVGuide for your own guide, feel free to do so. I suggest coming up with a series of individual guides that link to one another based on input/output and programs/steps in between. Just look at my DVD guide as an example. The article isn't even complete really-- but you can still get the gist of it knowing what your input and output are supposed to be. That way, the most important information is known upfront, and it's just a matter of filling in the details afterwards. This also makes it easier to read so that people can be like "input:check; output:check; moving on to the next section..."

Once you come up with a good plan, I suggest simply writing your series of guides as a set of posts right here in the forum, so that the information is just "out there" and you'll have complete control of it to use lists, links, images etc however you want. Then I can simply copy/paste it into AMVGuide wherever it fits; and you don't have to worry about all the html/css etc. You just have to make sure your content is written well; figure out where it all fits in the grand scheme of things (particularly what section or where it would fit in the menu); and PM me when you think it's ready. In all likelihood, everything you've described would replace the DVD/BD/Interlacing sections-- but the goal in most cases is to get your footage into AviSynth (at least, that's the way I have the guide set up), so I think everything should fit nicely

(Oh, and to address the simple/advanced issue: there is no need to make two versions... I can just wrap the advanced information in a show/hide script for those that want it. See my list of Common Mistakes as an example.)

So yeah, I think just using the forum here on the Org would be the easiest solution simply for getting your content into a web-friendly format. In fact, when I wrote AMVGuide, I just used a series of .txt files with headings/subheading/indents(hierarchy); then worried about formatting afterwards. And it was all a matter of copy-paste + tag wrapping... which would be pretty easy using the forum interface (just highlight the text you want to wrap and hit a tag button Then if you need special formatting, I can help with that afterwards. In summary: Structure, Content, Formatting.

Now... since it's September, and I'll be going back to school to complete my final year of Wireless Systems Engineering... I reeeeaaalllly won't be able to help much, aside from what I've already put into AMVGuide this summer. But I think what I've laid down is a highly flexible structure for anyone to expand upon all aspects of AMVing. Meaning... at this point, it's all copy-paste cruise control for me. I just want to sit back and wait for people to hand me content; tell me where to put it; and how they want it to look.
All I ask is that people follow the guidelines on the Site Info. Page.

Let me know if you're interested.

[mirkosp]

There is a need to make two versions.
Proper footage processing would require users to do manual ivtc, know how to deal with mixed framerates and motion compensation where required.
Base guides should greatly simply through automatic ivtc and using a script at 23.976, one at 29.97 and one at 59.94 (at a common assumefps depending on the fps of the amv) use whichever is smoothest for the scene and call it a day.
Basically the advanced guide would say "scratch that, what you need to do is completely different" in a few points. Can't quite just "expand" further.

That said, sounds good to me. I wanted to focus on writing content, but having to deal with all those html files was driving me insane, it's not what I want nor can do.
If you can deal with linkage and prettier looks, then it's going to make it easy for me, since I can just write the actual guides and call it a day.
The general workflow you got there looks about right (though as you guessed, with BDs it's going to change quite a bit). Currently I was taking into account a suggestion by zarxrax: at the top of each page, I'd list the software that the current page requires, and have links to the download pages of the guide that talk about installing the software and such.
Also as I said, the basic guide was structured kinda like a "choose your own adventure" thing, so at the end I'd have various links depending on what the user has and needs to do. Basically the guide wouldn't have a single workflow, but would be quite split and many pages would get reused from different ones, so you'd come from different directions and go to different parts of the guide in the same page.

[Phantasmagoriat]

Oh, IDK, having an expandable guide wouldn't be that bad. I mean, even Advanced users should want to read the Basic guide in the beginning so they can maximize the amount they learn in a short time-- then read the Advanced stuff afterwards to expand their knowledge. And Basic users are going to read the Basic guide anyway-- and simply ignore the Advanced information. By separating the two, you polarize the guide and create two groups of people based on effort levels, and provide little opportunity for those that want to learn the Basics + some Advanced stuff... which actually describes the majority of people.

I think a good solution to this would be to go ahead and make the two guides, but try to have them share the same workflow. The top half can be for the Basic, and the bottom half can be for the Advanced. That way, everyone reads the same guide; it provides the opportunity to read as much as is desired; and it should cut down on the amount of repeat information because the Advanced stuff is always rooted in the Basics. And if they really are so different, simply dedicate new pages for the various paths like I've done with Editing Methods:
III. Editing Methods
(1) Lossless Editing
(2) Lossy Editing
(4) FrameServing
(3) Proxy Editing

Sure, this means Basic users will have to say "oh, this doesn't apply to me." and click next a lot. But that's not such a big deal; and it does everyone a favor by raising awareness about issues they may deal with in the future. Alternatively, you could say: "If this doesn't apply to you, jump to the _____ section."

So that's what I suggest doing. Find common ground between the Basic and Advanced information, and do try to come up with a single workflow-- since both guides do go in the same general direction anyways. It's just a matter of recognizing how the guide diverges and converges.

Also, I really like the idea of having the "Required Software" listed at the top of each section. There's ample space beside the picture in each section, so it's very doable. I'll add that to the TODO list. ^__^

[mirkosp]

See, the problem is mostly with the deinterlacing/filtering/resizing part of the guide. Possibly encoding at the end, but not nearly as much, since it's a lot more similar at heart.
It's pretty quick to write a simple avs when you don't want to dwelve into it.
But if you want to do it right, you have to collect metrics, run pg, check for the short sections, find the patterns, solve overlayed pattern, motion compensate for fades/60i text, and vfr whatever needs to. And that's just only for deinterlacing. Then it comes to filtering, and there I'd like to expand some on proper filter usage, such as actually making use of masktools and so on (which are very handy). Custom Lists and Presets in Yatta would be covered most likely. I'd have to explain about reverse upscaling for BDs, as well as the different kernels for resizing and so on, instead of just giving a handy crop and resize line that "works." I'd have to teach tricks on how to recognize whether a DVD actually uses ITU PAR or ignores it. I'd have to cover a 16bit workflow in avisynth, which is just more complex than useful to the basic user. And other things would have to be covered too.
That's not short stuff to talk about, and it uses software a basic user won't even need. And it'd take quite a few pages. Hence why I'd just split it out. At most, when it comes to deinterlacing and filtering I can say "now you can either do it the easy way, which should give generally acceptable results, or do it the right way, which takes time and patience" or something along those lines. Eventually, the guides get back together once deinterlacing, filtering, and resizing are dealt with, but really, it's just too different from each other, I can't quite limit it to a dropdown if I want to actually make the guide comprehensive and good for the advanced user...

[BasharOfTheAges]

If you want to get that detailed, you do realize nobody is going to read or follow it and your effort is being wasted, right? You're just going to turn off any willingness to learn entirely. You don't bring a calculus book into an elementary school to teach math.

For the staggeringly-overwhelming majority of us, Cleaning and footage prep isn't something people LIKE to do, it's shit you HAVE to do. And "good enough" is the goal.

Make whatever, you want, but prioritize your time, so you make something useful to the 99.9% of us first, then add your super technical shit everyone's going to bypass later.