I've been editing AMVs since 2002, so this is my main forte, haha. I've also participated in different multi-editor projects over the past few years as well, including Animix, Video Game Project 3, Nightwish: Dark Desires, AMV Hell (0, CE, & 4, specifically - the segment I have in 0 is there because of violence, not the hentai that makes that project completely unsuitable for watching by pretty much everyone) and Project Trinity.
An old list from 2004 or thereabouts:
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/favvids.php?user_id=42329
In the time since then there are a lot more that could be added (and some on that listed completely replaced). Another place to look are the winning results for the yearly VCAs. Both that and the VCA results list several editors whose work I follow and enjoy.
2007 Results
2006 Results
2005 Results
2004 Results
2003 Results
2002 Results (Memories Dance is in this list)
Yet another place to look for quality suggestions is this area on the A-M-V.org forum:
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/viewforum.php?f=41
Other people's videos that might be relevant also (I'm going to try to stick to mostly recent videos here):
- A Lifetime by OropherZero (Kanon 2006 / Placebo - "Running Up That Hill") - of the Kanon 2006 videos I'll be linking to, this is probably the one to watch first.
- Season's Solace by WC Annihilus (another "Mummer's Dance" video, this time with the 2006 version of Kanon)
- Drink More Bleach by Copycat_Revolver (Bleach / Run With The Kittens - "Live Forever")
- Feel The Mambo by ScorpionP (various / Helena Pararizou - "Mambo")
- Where The Sidewalk Ends by dwchang (Oh My Goddess! OVA / Me First and the Gimme Gimmes - "End Of The Road")
- Lucky☆Star OVERDRIVE! by taifunbrowser (Lucky Star / a song by IOSYS with a title way too long to list)
- Dirge by Dark-Krystal (Cowboy Bebop the Movie / Johnny Cash - "God's Gonna Cut You Down")
- Stuck on the Battlefield by SacredArrow18 (Mai-HiME / Vanilla Ninja - "Battlefield")
- 3 Symphonies of Kanon by Full Metal Sempai (Kanon 2006 / Embrace - "Nature's Law")
- Sunlight by Sierra Lorna (Munto / Natalie Imbruglia - "Sunlight")
- Rozen Malina by rei.andrea (Rozen Maiden / Lacrimosa - "Malina")
- ROS5 - The Search For 4 / multi-editor collaborative video (it helps to know what the Reflections Of Style series of videos are first to appreciate the title joke; this video is not part of that series, it simply is making reference to it)
And for a totally shameless plug, some of my own videos:
- Bittersweet Sentimentalities (ToHeart2 OVA / Crush 40 - "Never Turn Back") - my latest release; has rather specific playback requirements that don't apply to others because of having two video tracks; which are not supposed to appear at once, just making that clear.
- ...Whatever... (The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya / Boy Kill Boy - "Suzie")
- Fate Against Will (NGE: RE-TAKE / Echo and the Bunnymen - "The Killing Moon") - see: the promotional banner in my sig; available in high-def 720p60.
- Nights:True (Please Teacher! / Peter Murphy - "All Night Long") - remastered/re-presented version of an earlier video.
- In Search Of Meaning (RahXephon / Michael W. Smith - "Place In This World") - expanded version of Project Trinity track.
- Decisions (Please Teacher! / Jennifer Love Hewitt - "How Do I Deal?")
- Won't You Take Me Back? (Oh My Goddess! OVA / Sugar - "Gee Angel")
- Solace In Destruction (various / Akira Ifukube - "Gojira no Kyoku 54-75)
A couple of my videos periodically end up getting uploaded to the tube by other people (I'm not a member and don't use the site much at all, certainly not for AMVs), or back in the day, made their way around peer-to-peer networks. The two in particular I'm thinking of are How Not To Be Seen and the SPHS Anime Club Commercial. Last I checked my winning entry from AMV Hell CE Round 20 was on the tube as well. Interestingly enough, apparently someone uploaded Fate Against Will also, but I'd rather people not watch it on there because the quality of the upload is horrible and unless you grab the actual FLV video file from your browser cache and watch it in Windows Media Player or something, it'll lag to all heck. It's much easier to just download the low-res Xvid file I made available - it looks a lot better too (and of course the HD and LOCAL versions look even better than the Xvid does).
On those links I gave, any links that say 'DIRECT' or 'indirect' are off-site, and can be downloaded from other hosting services (for mine, this is mostly Megaupload and Rapidshare, for other editors this might mean their own website servers). Any LOCAL links require a membership to A-M-V.org to download from (membership is free, and being an editor isn't required to be a member). As far as playback goes,
SMPlayer should be able to handle it, since it has everything built in. You'll want to get the one that says 'full setup', unless you don't use Windows. For any videos in H.264 - the ones usually seen as MP4 or MKV files - just make sure you're using a computer newer than say, 2004. If you can watch recent MKV fansubs without a problem, then most of those videos shouldn't be either.