Call to Arms: AVTECH4

[mirkosp]

Exactly why I wanted to split the guide to begin with. So I can just do the easy stuff for everybody first, then later get to the advanced guide.

That said, there also is the small amount (higher than what you'd think, possibly) of people that WANT to learn how to do all the advanced stuff. The problem is that such a guide does not exist at all.

If you don't want to go advanced then you shouldn't have to, but you shouldn't even try to kinda sorta pick some things here and there, it's just more confusing than it would be good. That's why, in those cases, it's best to stick to the simple way.

[Phantasmagoriat]

mirko, I'm not saying you are limited to little drop downs XD. Each one of those items you mentioned can easily have their own page as long as they relate together smoothly.
From what it sounds like, I could easily make a subsection called Advanced Preparation & Cleaning, and you can put all your stuff under that heading. Because the end result is still going to be the same: an .avs script or .avi file, right? Then Basic users can simply skip that whole section if they already have footage that seems good enough for them. ofc, you'd have to give me a list of all your pages with heading subheadings/sub-subheadings etc first... which is what you should do before even writing the guide in the first place. Once you do that, everything is 9001 times easier for everyone. Unfortunately, it's also the most difficult part. It should take a while. But if you do it first, you'll know exactly what you are dealing with so you can write pages at your leisure later on.

• 1. Menu Headings/SubHeadings/Sub-SubHeadings (Make Alpha-Numeric)
  2. Page Titles
  3. Page SubHeadings/Sub-SubHeadings
  4. input/output of each section
  -necessary steps to be added next
  -formatting to be figured out later

This is the whole reason why I made an alternative to the current guide index:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15771457/ReDesi ... h_alt.html

Just do that in a text file with indents and shit. Trust me. You won't regret it.

[mirkosp]

Mmmh, then I just didn't clearly understand before what you meant. Alright I think I can manage. I'll try to get back to you with a proper rundown of the guide.

[Phantasmagoriat]

Well, I probably should have been more clear about what I meant by dropdowns earlier. My intention is to add advanced information in a dropdown(s) at the end of each section wherever possible. That way, the most crucial info is right on the surface for Basic and Advanced users alike, while still maintaining connection to advanced techniques, as well as flowing into the rest of AMVGuide for covering all those non-technical aspects of AMVing as well. I may have to toy with the idea of multiple dropdowns like on the Site Info. Page (That's a fair amount of info. in a small space!). But if it's not possible, I'm certainly open to making as many pages as necessary. But I need a rough outline of your plan first. Just do it at your leisure... you have all the time in the world -owait2012nowai

[Mister Hatt]

Just saying, there really needs to be some segmentation on "basics of ripping", "manual field matching of multiple framerate content in the same frame", and all the crap in between. Too many idiots trying to do complicated things, and too many nubs being frightened by the intermediate stuff so ignoring the basics. Also add a damn checkbox to the forum for new threads for "YES I HAVE READ THE GUIDE" and link to it. Also, a section dedicated to encoding and advanced ripping techniques.

[mirkosp]

You might notice there hasn't been much progress report (nothing in fact) yet.
Fact is, a short while after I got this posted, development for vapoursynth started, and contrary to what I thought, it's going by quite fast. I believe in a few months time it will be fine to adopt, actually, so I wish to hold off the guide to until vapoursynth is completely up and running on all OSes. It currently is in a mostly usable state on Windows (though it still needs a buncha improvements), but for the other OSes it's left to building from source.
Fact is that avisynth was the main reason for the avtechs so far to be windows only, but with vapoursynth we'd finally be able to have a multi-os guide, so os x and linux users would greatly benefit from a new guide as well. So rather than write a v4 now and then get to a v5 then, I'll just hold off for vapoursynth to fully be around.
OTOH I'm not sure what this would mean for users that would want to use fake avi and such for editing. It's a bit early to know, but I believe saving lossless clips would be obligatory...
EDIT: Just as I say that, r12 introduces vsfs. Peeps gonna be happy.

[Zarxrax]

You should go ahead and write the guide. The actual scripting stuff can be added in later :p

[mirkosp]

I wonder... Well, I got the dvd/bd ripping written already. But then already from the next step avisynth's involved until the footage is loaded in the NLE.
Basically the only other thing I could write about would perhaps be the final encoding. I guess I can do that.

[Zarxrax]

Well a lot of the guide is conceptual and explaining stuff... not just showing lines of script. The scripts are probably the quickest part to add in.

[mirkosp]

No, see, that IS the problem with the guide. Most of the concepts and explanations need to be done step by step along with the scripts, if at all. People are ENTIRELY skipping the theory guides currently, plus they sound more complicated than they should, yet aren't quite as comprehensive.

For instance, avtech3 still does not mention colormatrix, which is important. It's not even that hard, and you don't even have to get into details. People don't need to know what are the white points and primaries. They just need to know that BDs are Rec. 709, DVDs are Rec. 601, and in playback anything up to 1024x600 is considered Rec. 601, whereas anything beyond is considered Rec. 709 and thus they need to convert the matrix when they're upscaling/downscaling through that resolution. Which isn't hard at all to do.

So yes, I believe simple explanation snippets along with the code, step by step in the guide, will be much less overwhelming and easier to understand.