Various Media Formats Guide

It's been said over and over, but I can not stress it enough. PLEASE do not use this method to simply download fansubs and use them in place of buying the DVDs. Not only will fansubs have really crappy looking footage, but when you buy DVDs you support the creators of the anime! I've heard all the arguments that fansubs look just as good as DVDs, but forget it. I'm telling you, if you use fansubbed footage, it WILL look like crap. Even if you think it's acceptable, any person with an eye for quality will tell you otherwise.

AnimeMusicVideos.org does not endorse using illegally downloaded footage. Do not post any questions on the forum related to using such footage, as it is not tolerated.

Getting Started

Video footage can come in many formats. You might have MKV, MP4, OGM, MPG, AVI, WMV, or maybe even something else. The problem with all of these though, is that they probably aren't fit for editing because they aren't compressed with a codec that is suitable for editing. In order to fix this, we are going to load the files through AviSynth, and then convert them into editable AVI files, which will solve all of our problems. Fortunately, no matter what type of file you have, we can handle it the same way.

At this point, you should already be familiar with AviSynth. If not, make sure to get familiar with it before going on.

Loading your video in AviSynth

This is pretty straightforward. All we need to do is make an AviSynth script like so:

FFVideoSource("C:\yourfolder\yourfile.avi")

Of course, make sure to change the path and filename to that of the actual file you are trying to load.

Now, a few caveats that you need to be aware of: First off, your file wont have audio anymore. Secondly, whenever you load a video through FFVideoSource, it will create a cache file in the same folder that the video file resides in. If you delete this cache file, it will be created again anytime you load the avisynth script. The cache file serves as an index so you can seek around in the file properly.

If you happen to WANT the audio as well, then you can use either of the following:

FFCopyrightInfringement("C:\yourfolder\yourfile.avi")

DirectShowSource("C:\yourfolder\yourfile.avi")

The first one is preferred, but if it gives you problems, then try the second one instead.

Dealing with 120fps AVI files

I'm going to avoid going into the details of why anyone would make a 120fps AVI in the first place, and just tell you how to deal with it, in case you happen to have one. You need to download the avi_tc_package. Unzip the files and run the one called tc-GUI.exe. Start up this program and you will notice three boxes where you need to select files. In the first box, choose your 120fps AVI file. In the second box, choose a new filename to save the corrected file to. In the third box, you can fill in any name you wish to save this file to, as you wont need it anyways. Finally, hit the "run" button, and it will output your new, 29.97 fps AVI file. Now, load this file into avisynth just like I showed above.

Resizing and Changing the FPS of Your Footage

Sometimes your files may be encoded at the wrong resolution or aspect ratio, and it will need to be corrected. If you are planning to use multiple video sources in your AMV, you will also need to ensure that they are all the same resolution. Likewise, you will need to make sure all of your sources use the same framerate that you will specify in your editing software.

AssumeFPS(X)

And replace X with the framerate you want... You will probably want to use either AssumeFPS("ntsc_film") for 23.976 fps, or AssumeFPS("ntsc_video") for 29.97. While you could just type the numbers in instead, using these names for the fps will be more accurate.

Finally, you need to make sure your files are all resized properly. This is already explained quite well in the DVD guides, so I will direct you over there: Dealing with Aspect Ratios. Just to simplify though, you will probably just need to resize your footage to either a 4:3 resolution (640x480) or a 16:9 resolution (848x480, 640x352). Your footage also likely has a square pixel aspect ratio.

If your resizing is all fine, then I highly recommend that you clean up your footage.

And finally, once you are ready to move on, we will convert these files into editable AVIs in the next section.

Zarxrax - March 2010