Shouri's Basic AMV Clip Making Tutorial + Some

[Shouri no Hana]

Premade in Word...I had to, it took some time.

Okay, as of late I’ve been getting very annoyed with questions such as: (Because I can type, therefore I will not write it in l33t speak or whatever you call it)

“What Program do you use?”
I use Sony Vegas, end of story.

“How do you remove the subtitles?”
“How did you get it to look like a movie? You know the widescreen look.”

All of that shall be answered here; this is why I am writing this tutorial. In this tutorial here I will try my best to show you newbies or completely clued out AMV makers how to:

Create Clips (They will be small in size and won’t have sound)
Remove subtitles (Because subtitles in an AMV make it look bad, it doesn’t matter how good the timing is)
Letterbox (A.K.A. ‘That Widescreen Movie Look’)
Watermark (Those who steal AMVs should burn in hell; and generally they don’t know how to crop)

Anyway I know uP|iN|fLaM3z has created a tutorial on how to make AMVs in Window’s Movie Maker; but then it hit me, that STILL won’t stop the “How do you remove the subtitles?” questions. Hopefully this here will stop it.

Shall we begin?

Contents: (Because some of us can’t scroll down and look for them, use the Ctrl+F feature.)

Part One: Creating Clips while Removing the Subtitles and Letterboxing
Part Two: Watermarking
Part Three: Your Questions or Praise or Flames (Flames will be used to shovel my mother’s laneway, it’s that much faster.)

Part One: Creating Clips while Removing the Subtitles AND Letterboxing

Step One: Setting Up

Well, to make it all work, you need to open/download VirtualDub.
http://www.virtualdub.org/

Before I get attack by “Why doesn’t VDub open my files?!” questions, please, make sure your file is in a format that is compatible with VDub. I don’t want to deal with those questions.

Well, open up VDub.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v382/silverbands/Clips1.jpg

Oh yes, I almost forgot, here we will also learn how to remove audio and compress the file so it won’t be a whopping 50 megabytes for a 30 second clip.

Open your file with Ctrl+O or File – Open.

Because I’m too lazy to search for my disks with the Naruto episodes on them, and to the fact that I wish to start making Bleach AMVs I will be using the eleventh episode of Bleach. The dimensions that I will use here will be identical to the ones I use on my Naruto clips. But you can easily make up and use your own.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v382/silverbands/Clips2.jpg

(Thanks to Lunar Anime and Bleach Exile for this episode. xD)
(P.S. Don’t mind the battery gauge at the bottom, it’s the most f-ed up thing you can ever find.)

Yea, anyway; let’s remove the audio. Audio – No Audio

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v382/silverbands/Clips3.jpg

There, we just made the file size that much smaller! But I prefer to set my compression before I save my clip because I tend to forget. Heehee

Video – Compression or Ctrl + P

I use DviX to compress my files, if you want to use something else fine by me, but I can’t help you if something goes wrong.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v382/silverbands/Clips4.jpg

END SET UP STEP

[Shouri no Hana]

Okay, that’s all done. Now to get to the actual removal of the subtitles.

Video – Filters or Ctrl + F

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v382/silverbands/Clips5.jpg

Click Add, if you can’t find it…well, ask someone near you in the real world, maybe they can find it for you.

Click Resize, it’s near the bottom and the list is in alphabetical order, if you can’t find it…seriously…you should be able to find it…

Now, a window will pop up. Change the numbers to follow this.

New Width: 640
New Height: 370

Check – Expand Frame with letterbox image

Frame Width: 640
Frame Height: 480

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v382/silverbands/Clips6.jpg

((Trying to show you the current result will be painful so I won’t do it. Heh.))

Then click okay or hit Enter/Return…I don’t know. Then while ‘Resize’ is still highlighted in the filters box (assuming you didn’t close that box) click ‘Cropping’

This window should open

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v382/silverbands/Clips7.jpg

Now to remove those blasted subtitles! Now, because we set the ‘New Height’ option to 370 that allows us to remove exactly 110 pixels off the height, no more or no less otherwise we have to change the ‘New Height’ settings.

Okay, you can either set the numbers to: (DO NOT TOUCH THE X OFFSETS!)

Y1 Offset – 55
Y2 Offset – 55

For one line subtitles

OR

Y1 Offset – 25
Y2 Offset – 85

For two line subtitles

OR

Y1 Offset – 0
Y2 Offset – 110

Because some scenes only look good when you can see the whole face of the character

Generally I just change them according to the scenes that I’m cutting, so for now I’ll set it to 55/55.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v382/silverbands/Clips8.jpg

Click OK, and then OK again to close the filters window.

Congrats, your anime has just been letterboxed, and hopefully the subtitles have been removed. Of course, my VDub just crashed (Sorry, I was too busy swearing inwardly at my computer to take a picture)….give me a sec…

There, hitting the right arrow key a couple of times should give you this.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v382/silverbands/Clips9.jpg

(Okay, I went scene searching, caught up in the moment.)

NEXT STEP, CLIP MAKING...heehee

[Shouri no Hana]

Fun…now for scene cutting…I’ll be cutting out some scene…thank god I’m writing this in Word instead of online…heh. Okay, the ‘introduction’ scene of Ishida, or whatever…

Set the cursor on the timeline to the first frame of the scene you are cutting. Then click the right arrow thing below the timeline. Every frame before your scene should highlight like so.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v382/silverbands/Clips10.jpg

Hit the delete key on your keyboard. If you deleted something you didn’t want to delete hit Ctrl + U or Edit- Undo (Why is it Ctrl + U instead of Ctrl + Z? Maybe because the word ‘Undo’ starts with the letter ‘U’ instead of ‘Z’)

Run through the scene until you hit the last frame of the segment you want. Or the first frame of the scene after the segment you want, both work.

Hit the arrow button again and your scene should highlight. (I don’t have to show an image right?)

NOTE: IF YOU WISH TO WATERMARK THE CLIP BEFORE YOU SAVE (I recommend it to WMM users, Vegas or Premier users can watermark after the video is made) SKIP DOWN TO THE WATERMARK TUTORIAL

File – Save as AVI or F7 *whacks F7*

Save the file, I’m positive I don’t have to give you blow by blow.

While saving you should get this (getting this image required timing, but not a lot of it =P)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v382/silverbands/Clips11.jpg

And here is your clip. Or did you accidentally render the whole episode? Delete that file and try again.

REMOVING SUBTITLES AND LETTERBOXING TUTORIAL COMPLETE!

Hrm...well It was just going to be one uber long post, but I broke it up, next bit is Watermarking. Bah Post it in the same post.

Part Two: Watermarking

What? You want to learn how to watermark too? Well, I did say that I was going to show you guys how.

First, open your Paint or Photoshop.

Because I’m using my dimensions, my watermark will match my letterbox size. Which is: 55x480

To figure out the height of your watermark use this equation:

(Y1 + Y2)
2

You DO know what your Y1 and Y2 values are right? See I’ll fill out mine.

(55+55)
2

110
2

=55

Okay, math class is over. EVERYONE WAKE UP!

Now, the watermark is easy to make, the background should be black and the writing is whatever font and colour at whatever size that fits nicely. (Assuming you know what you want to write)

This is mine

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v382/silverbands/WhiteWatermark.jpg

Save it somewhere that you can remember. Now back into VDub.

Video – Filters or Ctrl + F

Add – Logo

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v382/silverbands/Clips12.jpg

Hit the ‘…’ button and locate your watermark.

Hit the ‘Show Preview’ button if you wish.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v382/silverbands/Clips13.jpg

OK, and then OK again…yadda yadda.

Save your clip, video whatever, if you skipped down for the watermark tutorial jump back up for the ‘saving’ section of the first tutorial

WATERMARK TUTORIAL DONE!

Part Three: Your Questions or Praise or Flames (Flames will be used to shovel my mother’s laneway, it’s that much faster.)

Well, that there is my first tutorial. I don’t plan on making a profession out of it. I’m just fed up of the “How do you remove the subtitles” questions I keep reading on YouTube.

You guys know how to remove them now, RIGHT?!

*Shouri runs off and grabs a 2x4 then returns*

Seriously, if anyone asks you just direct them here, it will save us from these questions. BUT if anyone asks here in THIS thread I will whack them senseless with this 2 by 4!

Just Kidding.

So, is there anything that I missed? Like, dunno, making the tutorial more organized? I actually tried doing a Step By Step layout, but because of the way I wrote this, it didn’t work out.

[Up In FlameZ♥]

not a bad tutorial, i dont really like letterboxing a bleach episode because Lunar puts the subs high like i dont really like cropping by 85 pixels

[Shouri no Hana]

it doesn't matter with the subber, even for Dattebayo, Puku Anime or Wolf Pack Productions I find myself cropping the bottom at 85 pixels with their two liners. But that is why I use a crop at the top too, to even it out at 110 pixels, the watcher doesn't notice if one scene is like 20 pixels higher then the one before or after it, but generally a fight scene doesn't have alot of dialouge.

But AMV makers have different tastes, like I HATE letterboxing a timestraped subbed episode because it ends up being like a 180 to 200 pixel crop because I can't take away from the top.

[Up In FlameZ♥]

it doesn't matter with the subber, even for Dattebayo, Puku Anime or Wolf Pack Productions I find myself cropping the bottom at 85 pixels with their two liners. But that is why I use a crop at the top too, to even it out at 110 pixels, the watcher doesn't notice if one scene is like 20 pixels higher then the one before or after it, but generally a fight scene doesn't have alot of dialouge.

But AMV makers have different tastes, like I HATE letterboxing a timestraped subbed episode because it ends up being like a 180 to 200 pixel crop because I can't take away from the top.

really? i have ANBU_AonE episodes and the highest i have ever had to crop is 66 pixels

also i dont use wmm and i use adobe premiere for letterboxing my clips instead of virtualdubmod most of the time

[Shouri no Hana]

I don't have preimer and I also don't use WMM, so I stick with VDub, the tutorial was also for the people who use WMM but wish to remove the subs.

I have ANBU_AonE episodes too but I never really paid any attention to them.

Bleach Society...their subtitles are so stinking high, I found myself at 110, and that was JUST enough.