The Rockman Anime Music Video Station

For awhile now I was trying to download a lot of different animes, but when I try to torrent them, all I get is weird file type anime.

For one... I know that Vegas can open:
AVI
WMV
MP3
MPEG 4 ( To a certain extent)
WMA

and That's about all I know.

I know It can't open files such as "MKV" but I also keep coming across the file type "OGM" and "RM" now I'm wondering... can Vegas open these? Also... what other file types CAN Vegas open?

It's just getting frustrating to not know exactly what I can and can't work with... Also, I'm trying to make it so that I don't have to convert my videos...even though that seems more and more likely...

Also...if converting videos IS like my only option... can someone link me to a good converting program. One that can convert MKV or OGM or RM or all to AVI.

"Converting" video is such an ugly, ugly concept. Decompressing a video, then turning around and recompressing it is ugly. Bad. Yuck yuck yuck. Inducing errors before you get anywhere. A better alternative is demuxing... just pull out the video, without actually recompressing anything. (Yes, I'm a purist, but I'm also looking at this from a fansubber/DVD releaser stance)

As far as your list of touchy-feely formats....

RM - Ah, RealMedia. Who uses this, anyways? If this is all there is.... that's really kinda sad. The answer I'm aware of that meets my spec, is using Real Alternative with Avisynth. Real Alternative includes, among other things, the RealMedia Splitter, which is necessary for DirectShow to handle RM properly. Once you got that... as the previous statement hints, Avisynth can handle the rest, using DirectShowSource().

OGM - You've never met Ogg.... that's kinda weird. *<_<* Anyways. This one, I can't say I got a foolproof answer. Obviously, DirectShowSource() could do it. If I recall rightly, you ~MIGHT~ be able to properly demux Ogg videos using VirtualDubMod. This may well be one of the only cases I might not bash its use. Barring that, possibly getting your hands on . Command line, but you shouldn't be scared of the prompt. I've not tried it, dunno how well it plays. But if it pulls out the video, it should dump it into an AVI, since that's mostly the kind of stuff you could dump in there anyways.

MKV - Ah, Matroska. Great stuff, really. And, much easier to play with than the alternatives. Get your hands on MKVToolNix, that's your first stop. That'll help you deal with getting out the raw video stream. If it's a format which plays well with VFW, it'll automatically go into an AVI container. Which is great, unless it's h.264. Then, you need to start playing funny games.... If you would like me to go on, I can.

For the purposes of AMV making, you're kinda right, you don't see Ogg files. Pretty sure that the primary reason for this is twofold. First off, it's an older container.... Matroska serves the same purpose, but with greater capacities (for example, Advanced SSA subtitles being able to be muxed into the video file directly, instead of being left as external). That's really the big one.... The second reason I can think of, is that I'm somewhat sure that Ogg can't be used as a container for h.264 anyways.... and the formats that it could contain, are ones which play nice with Video for Windows (VFW). In which case, if all you're looking for is a raw file, an AVI would suffice just as well.

You really got me as to why anyone releases RM for anything. If you want a good quality video, you get a video with a good resolution and a real codec. With RM being proprietary, and you have to dance around the whole issue using DirectShow renderers.... it doesn't make for being pretty in the AMV-making world.

~*~

In light of some of the stuff that Antoine was mentioning to me in IM, I felt the need to possibly address a few points of stuff.

First off.... and I'm thinking I should make this in big font, so that no one could possibly miss it.



These are all CONTAINERS for video. This is a fundamental point.... one which many people cannot seem to grasp. It's not so important that a program explodes on a container, as much as that it explodes on a particular video format (the stuff ~in~ the video.... your XviD, DivX 5, WMV9, and so on...)



The other point that I wanna mention at this point, too, is one regarding MP4s. First off, it's not proprietary... too many people equate MP4 with Apple. Incorrect. Just because they use it for their lil iTunes music source doesn't mean they own all rights to the container.

The second, more interesting point, is that MP4 is the other white meat... uhm... other standardly seen container for h.264 video. So, gonna take a moment here to address this one.

Again, like before, we're trying to get the h.264 video demuxed from the container, and we're gonna end up with an elementary h.264 stream. For this process, get yourself a copy of YAMB. Among all the goodies in there is a nice GUI frontend to the program MP4Box. And MP4Box has superpowers which include, among other things, to be able to demux MP4 streams into elementary videos. Once you got this, then you can go back and do what I was mumbling about before, dumping the elementary h.264 into an AVI container.

umm.... wow...I wasn't expecting so much intel XD

thanks for all the info Lexica-chan... It's really going to be useful in my future, seriously.

I think this info should be stickied or added to a tutorial or something XD

just a side note

photoshop's .psd + Sony Vegas = Best Friends For Life.



Thats how i get my masking done. its really easy once you realize vegas can import .psd files.