A&E's Technical Guides to All Things Audio and Video (BETA)

Welcome to ErMaC and AbsoluteDestiny's guides to all things audio and video version 3!

As of version 3, this guide is being maintained primarily by Zarxrax.

WARNING! This version of the guide is a BETA, which means it is not the final version. Lots of things have been added or changed from previous versions of the guide, and so some odd mistakes might pop up here or there. For this reason, this version of the guide is only recommended for people who are already familiar with previous versions of the guide.

These guides are designed to give you an insight into the theory behind audio and video and also to show you how to get some of the best looking and sounding AMVs that you can using software in Windows. Please note that this guide is intended to be read in its ENTIRITY. If you simply skip around, it is VERY likely that you will be confused.

-> Getting Started <-

-> Download AMVApp 3.0 beta <-

-> Glossary of terms <-

VIDEO

AUDIO

Theory Guides:

Video Basics

Television Video, Digital Video, Framerates, Resolutions, and Aspect Ratios

Understanding Audio

What Makes Audio Sound,
Digital Audio - what it all means
Quantization
Normalization
What a waveform actually shows you.

The Big Picture

Interlaced vs. Progressive,
Fields vs. Frames
3:2 pulldown and Inverse Telecine

Colorspace

YUV and RGB and why they are very important to you

The Ins and Outs of Audio Compression.

How Audio Compresses
MP3 Compression
Psychoacoustics and Masking Sounds
Bitrates and how they work
CBR and VBR
Joint Stereo

The Ins and Outs of Video Compression

What is Video Compression, Lossless Compression, Lossy Compression, Intra-frame and Inter-frame Compression

Advanced Video Compression

Editable Codecs
Distribution Codecs and Containers

 

Producing your AMV:

The AMVapp, AVIsynth and VirtualDubMod

Installing the AMVapp

Testing the AMVapp Software

AVIsynth: What it is, how it works and why you need to use it

VirtualDubMod: What it is, how it works and why you need to use it too!

Getting your Video

Overview - Read this!

How to get your source footage into something you can edit.

Options for Video Sources

- Capturing footage using a video capture card

- Using Downloaded Footage

- Ripping DVD Footage (vob files)

- Indexing your DVD footage with DGIndex and loading the d2v files into an avisynth script

- Analyzing the DVD Footage
    (-Is it Interlaced?
    - Checking the Field Order
    - Interlacing Methods)

- Interlaced vs Progressive Editing

- Restoring Progressive Frames

- Aspect Ratios
    (-PAR and DAR
    - Dealing with Aspect Ratios)

- Cleaning up the footage

- Deciding what to do with the avisynth file(s)

 then

- Making Clips or
- Editing avs files directly or
- Bait-and-Switch Editing

Getting your Audio

Introduction

How to get perfect audio copies from -

CDs

DVDs

Downloaded Audio

Video Files


Editing and Preparing your audio

Editing your music/song so it's shorter

Making your music louder

- Normalizing
- Boosting

Converting Sample rates


Editing your AMV:

23.976fps in Adobe Premiere

How to attempt to edit 23.976fps video in Adobe Premiere

Setting up a Video Editing Project:

Adobe Premiere 5.x and 6.x
Adobe Premiere Pro
Vegas Video
Windows Movie Maker 2
Ulead Movie Studio Pro 7

 Avoiding and Fixing Common Video Problems

'Jerky video'
Memory Conflicts when using Avisynth Scripts
Garbage data in HuffYUV exports
Bad Premiere Exports
Pixellated footage where there should not be
Interlaced footage where there should not be.


Using your audio to help you make your video

Principles and Theory of AMV Timing

Premiere Audio Editing

Basic Timing
Advanced Timing
Stereo Positioning and Audio Effects

Exporting Your AMV Ready For Compression

Adobe Premiere 5.x and 6.x
Adobe Premiere Pro
Vegas Video
Windows Movie Maker 2
Ulead Movie Studio Pro 7

Post Production:

Post Production

Before you begin
Removing any Interlacing

Improving visual quality and compressibility
Guidlines for sending your video to a convention

Online Video Distribution

Aspect Ratios and Frame Sizes
Distribution Formats 101

Compressing to MPEG-1:

Compressing video to MPEG-1
Compressing audio to MP2

Compressing to DivX-5 compatible XviD AVI:

Compressing video to XviD
Compressing audio to MP3

Compressing to H.264 MPEG-4:

Compressing to H.264 with Zarx264gui