Do you want to start making AMVs (Anime Music Videos) but aren’t sure where to begin or where to get your material? Below is a list of numerous ways and resources for downloading the footage you need! Often times, beginner editors will either download or screen record their footage off a streaming site. This method might seem more convenient but the quality is often highly compressed, and well, subtitles aren’t all that pretty for editing. If you’re looking to get the best anime footage to work with I recommend taking advantage of your options below.
Please note that this article is purely educational, not legal advise.
Always check your local law on legality of following subjects.
Torrents
Instead of downloading files from a central server, torrenting involves downloading files from other users’ devices on the network. For a more detailed explanation as well as a step-by-step guide, you can read through this article. Generally speaking, you‘ll want to do this on a PC rather than trying on a mobile device.
Through torrents, you’ll able to download an unlimited collection of high-quality anime episodes and movies in multiple languages, no subtitles. In simple terms, you can think of it as “right out of the studio” as it’s completely unedited or compressed, also known as RAW. Nyaa Torrents is one of the largest public anime-dedicated torrent indexes, and some nice alternatives are Beatrice Raws, Erai Raws, and Shana Project. Generally speaking, torrents will have series that other sources don’t given that said sources depend on torrents themselves. Torrents are great for those that strive for the highest quality possible as well as an unlimited amount of series.
Direct Download
Some users may not want to torrent due to lack of storage, legal concerns, or rather because they’re a mobile editor. For whatever the reason — If you’re looking to download full episodes without torrents, your best bet would be browsing direct download (DD) sources! As of now, the most popular source for this is Anime Raw’s Masterlist. This site is run by a small team of AMV editors that torrent series (all episodes), encode, and then upload them on mega.nz for others to easily download without hassle. Though do keep in mind that this is a long process that’s done for free, so unlike torrents, you might not find every show you want. Do note that the Anime Raws team has encrypted their links for copyright purposes meaning you must join their Discord to access said keys.
Some alternative sources you can check out are Kayoanime and AnimeOut however both sites upload their videos in mkv, meaning you’ll have to convert (encode) them to mp4 yourself as most editing softwares do not support this format.
Community Sites
In most communities you’ll often find a group of people dedicated to making things easier for the rest of their peers. Conversely, animeclips.online is one of the best sites you can find in the editing community for numerous reasons, the main one being that their encoding method doesn’t impact the footage as much as most competitors.
The creators behind this site torrent episodes, encode, and then upload them into multiple parts for others to download. This is ideal for users who don’t wish to download a full episode but rather just a specific scene as it saves both time and storage. Though do keep in mind that the site is still in earlier development so you might not find what you’re looking for at all times. Some other sites that provide trimmed down anime scenes you can check out are sugoi-media.com and sakugabooru.com. Though the ladder isn’t necessarily directed towards the editing community, it can still come in handy.
Anime OP/ED Creditless
Have you ever wanted to edit a scene from an anime opening or ending, but without all the credits and words on the screen? To download anime openings or endings without credits you must search for and download them separately, as any full episode will typically have credits.
Most creditless OP/ED’s can be found on your typical torrent sites such as Nyaa, however if you aren’t open to torrenting, there are a few different blogs and editor-ran sites you can check out. Some of these sites include animethemes.moe, MagiKarpVids, and HDKirin’s Openings & Endings.
Scene Packs
If you don’t feel like downloading or hunting through multiple episodes, your best bet would be to look up scene packs, also known as (comp)ilations! There are an handful of editors that cut, compile, and share scenes of a certain character or duo into a single video for others to use. One of the most popular anime sources for this is known as Comp Squad, though do note that you may not find material for newer gen animes due to a decline in activity in the last few years.
Most scene pack accounts are located on either YouTube or Instagram and can typically be found by searching for certain keywords such as “comp”, “scene”, or the name of the show or character. This said, many editors share packs on their personal accounts which can be harder to find. You can try browsing through edits of the desired series and hope to find credit listed in one or the captions, leading you to the pack creator’s account. I’ve also compiled a list of numerous comp accounts which you can find here.
