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The goal of this guide is to teach one how to create an Anime Music Video, not including the actual timing and editing of the footage itself that can found on YouTube or in the editors documents.  This will help with the most difficult part of AMV creation, prepping video and audio for editing then exporting and encoding the completed Anime Music Video.

Throughout this guide I reference ErMaC and AbsoluteDestiny’s guides to all things audio and video version 3 (aka READFAG).  What I wrote here is more-or-less an extremely simplified version of that text with ease in mind.  The depth of their guide is excessive for easily bewildered beginners to the AMV creation hobby.

So, this is how you make a high video/audio quality AMV in 2008.

Software you’ll need

1. AMVapp
2. dBpoweramp Music Convert
3. DVD Decrypter (FYI: no longer being updated as of 2005)
4. AVISynth
5. PICVideo MJPEG Codec by Pegasus Imaging codec (optional)
6. Your favorite editing software

The Video Source conversions hierarchy:

From…

• DVD to
• VOB files to
• D2v files then through
• AVS script to
• AVI’s sent to the
• Editor converted to single
• AVI then through
• AVS script to
• AVI (Final AMV).

Step One: Make local Vob files from your DVD’s

To do this use DVDDecrypter, this straight forward program will allow you ‘rip’ only the files you want.  In most cases, after the automatic scan of the disc; it finds and selects the main section of the disc, the movie or an episode.

After creation of the .VOB file(s), an .IFO file also is automatically generated.  Ignore that.

Step Two: Convert .VOB files to AVISynth-friendly .d2v files

To do this use DVD2AVI or DGIndex, same thing; DGIndex is the new DVD2AVI and is included with AMVapp.  Another straight forward program, DGIndex will convert your VOB’s to a single d2v file or multiple depending on how many VOB’s you open at one time.

***Important note*** hit ‘f5’ after loading a vob file to get vital information about the footage, you will need much of this information later.

Ounce you have the files loaded into DGIndex, click file then SAVE PROJECT (caps for emphasis).

Step Three: AVISynth script Time!

Time to make an AVISynth script!  Let’s start with loading the new .d2v files.

Open a text editor such as Notepad, save it as whateveryouwant.avs.  Copy this below into the new file:

LoadPlugin(”C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\Decomb.dll”)
LoadPlugin(”C:\Program Files\AMVApp\DGMPEGDec\DGDecode.dll”)
MPEG2Source(”C:\yourfolder\yourprojectfile.d2v”, cpu=4)
***your plug-in directories may be different***

Save again.  What this does is load necessary plug-ins to convert your d2v project into something VirtualDub can read, the cpu=4 cleans the footage up.  You can use up to cpu=6 but that is known to blur the end result.

Test this file by opening it in Virtual dub.  Repeat process as necessary for other episodes if not all included in one d2v project.

Step Four: Removing the interlace if needed

Remember how to get detailed information of the footage you’re using?  Hit ‘f5’ in DGIndex to preview and get information on the video.  Look at ‘Video Type and Frame Type then check READFAG for your situation.  As you can see my example is explained in the number 4 description of READFAG.  Instructions for each follow the descriptions however try the generic below lines first.

To remove interlacing, copy this:

deint = TDeint(mode=2, mtnmode=3, blim=100)
TFM(pp=0, cthresh=4, clip2=deint) #pp=0 while editing, change to pp=6 before exporting
TDecimate()

Then again, preview in VirtualDub to make sure interlacing is gone.

Step Five: If episodes, cut intro/outro out equally.

To trim find the frames which you want to cut from and to (listed at bottom of VirtualDub) and modify this line:

Add the below line to you AVS script:
trim(2160, 32390)
/2160 being the first frame from which you video will encode…

***Important Note*** you want to use this for all the episodes (uniform) so that your video editing TIMING won’t be thrown off if you have to re-encode your source footage (we are not there yet).

Step Six: Clean up (post processing) and convert to RGB

Now copy this into your AVS file:

DeRainbow(10)
Deen(”w3d”,3,3,5)
ConvertToRGB24()

DeRainbow and Deen are purly option but Deen is always recommended.  DeRainbow helps correct some color problems.  More Pre-processing information here (READFAG):

You need to convert to RGB now to resize/editing next.

Step Seven: Resize and crop the Footage

Sometimes cropping is necessary to clean up one or more sides of the footage, below is an example:

To do this, use this line:

Crop(5,0,0,0)

The result will crop the left by 5 pixels.

Here are the lines needed however the numbers are different depending on the footage aspect ratio/dimensions.

LanczosResize(720,408)
AddBorders(0,36,0,36)

In the case above, this is CUSTOM setting you won’t find on EATFAG.  I had to figure this one out to make Kino’s Journey look normal (not fat or widened video).

Go here for more information read EATFAG on this topic.
Generally for X sources:
X=4.3, use

Crop(8,0,-8,-0)
LanczosResize(640,480)

Or if X=16.9, use:

LanczosResize(848,480)

Step Eight: Making clips for Editing (in Premiere)

Open  your AVS files in VirtualDub, goto video, compressor, choose HuffYUV.  The presets are fine.

The click “Save as AVI” from the file menu.  If you have multiple items to encode, try the Job Control function.

Then use the simple, quick, straight-forward program; AVIfrate to change the framerate to 24FPS

Step Nine: Setting up your editing software (with Premiere in mind)

Open Premiere and select ‘New project’.  Click the ‘Custom Settings’ tab at the top:

Editing Mode: Desktop
Timebase: 24.0 frames/second
YOU adjust the size, aspect ratio, possible Fields based off what you resized and the information from DGIndex.  ***note*** I did not adjust Pixel Aspect Ratio, maybe I should have…

In Video Rendering, select PICVideo MJPEG codec as the Compressor.  You can get this from PICVideo MJPEG Codec.
http://www.pegasusimaging.com/

Step Ten: Prep’ing your audio

Here we’ll convert an mp3 to Wave then to a 24FPS Wave for this video.

To convert to wave, use dBpoweramp Music Convert.  Leave all the settings default after opening your mp3 (we want a Wave file output).
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm

After creating the Wave, open BeSweet GUI from the AMVapp folder, open the new wave and change the Frame Rate via the checkbox options on the lower left, now hit WAV to WAV.

Your audio output is now ready for import into Adobe Premiere.

Step Eleven: Editing

YouTube or a good book can teach you how to use your editing software far better than I can here…

One recommendation is to change auto-save to every 5 minutes.  Premiere likes to crash.

Also expand the audio to display audio wavelengths to help tune your video to audio highs and lows.

Step Twelve: Exporting for Encoding… (for any encode)

After all the editing and timing is complete, go to file, export, then movie.  Then click the settings button in the dialog that appears.

In General make sure Range = Entire Sequence.

In Video select Huffyuv.  Defaults should be fine.

Adobe Premiere has never made a good encode the first time, so you may have to encode the file twice.

Step Thirteen: Encoding H.264

We need one final AVS script for this one with the following two lines:

AVISource(”C:\folder\sequence 01.avi”)
ConvertToYV12()

***modified source, unknown if you can have a space in the path***

Save that and open Zarx264gui from the AMVapp folder, the input video is the AVS file (won’t accept video files) you just created. Leave all else default

Here is the guide to Zarx264gui if you are interested.

Done.

One of my AVS files for my last video:

LoadPlugin(”C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\Decomb.dll”)
LoadPlugin(”C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\DGDecode.dll”)
MPEG2Source(”D:\AMV\d2v\first2.d2v”, cpu=4)
deint = TDeint(mode=2, mtnmode=3, blim=100)
TFM(pp=0, cthresh=4, clip2=deint) #pp=0 while editing, change to pp=6 before exporting
TDecimate()

trim(2160, 32390)

DeRainbow(10)
Deen(”w3d”,3,3,5)
ConvertToRGB24()

Crop(5,0,0,0)
#BicubicResize(720,360)
LanczosResize(720,408)
AddBorders(0,36,0,36)

#LanczosResize(720,360)
#AddBorders(0,60,0,60)

I made this for two reasons, one to help others surfing the net looking for a very general guide and two to remind myself of what I did for my last video.  If this guide gets some views then I’ll add detail.  I doubt that’ll happen though.