AnimeMusicVideos.org > Guide Index
Getting Your VideoBefore you start to collect the footage for you amv, you need to think about where you are going to get your footage from and how you are going to prepare it. This page is intended as a simple rundown of the options available for you to use and the pros and cons of each source. DVDs - Plentiful, accessible, good quality and very useable. If you have an option to work from a DVD source then by all means do. Just make sure to buy legit DVDs and not bootlegs, because bootlegs look like crap. If your DVDs are in PAL format (mostly from Europe and Australia), then they probably look like crap. Try to get DVDs from North America if possible. If you are uncertain about the legality of an online stores's dvds, ask on the forums or read through the Pirate Anime FAQ to see if it's a bootleg or not. If it looks too good to be true (region 0, cheap, entire series crammed onto a small number of discs) then it's probably a bootleg and shouldn't be bought. To use DVDs as your video source, just check out the: DVD Ripping Guide - Aside from Blu-ray, this is usually your best option if you want your amv to look nice. Blu-Ray - If you have access to Blu-rays, it is definitely your best option. Nice, high-definition footage, square pixels, and it's usually progressive! Blu-ray guide. Game footage - If you need to rip footage from a game, it can sometimes be rather complex because the video files can usually be pretty difficult to get at and convert to something usable. You will usually need specialized tools for it. Look in the forums for some individual guides on how to rip footage
from certain platforms. Also check out the Various Media Formats Guide below, as it might be of some use. If all else fails, you can always just do it oldschool with a video capture card. This wont be as pretty as ripping the footage though. Downloaded footage - No. I don't care what anyone says about the current quality of fansubs or anything like that, downloaded footage is almost always second grade. They've done a great job cleaning up the footage but even then it's often riddled with chroma noise from TV captures and so on. Many digisubs suffer from poor quality fades, blocking on gradients and all sorts of other issues you are not going to get on a DVD. If there happens to be some footage that you've downloaded that you really can't find officially (like, for instance, something which was never released on DVD) then it might be alright to use this method. If you just want to make an AMV to a brand new show which isn't available on DVD yet, you might want to just wait on it, as it usually doesn't take all THAT long for the DVDs to come out.
YouTube - Just stab yourself in the face. |