silverthunder | (no subject)

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Backstreet Boys - Incomplete

(no subject)

I don't really have anything much to work with to make it fancy or anything, but I decided a couple days ago to make an AMV. It's not going to be anything special. I've only spent about six or seven hours on it so far... Most of what I'm doing is trying to sync it with the music. (read: trying) Hopefully it'll be half-decent.

At any rate, it's keeping me busy, and I like that. It's nice to have time to work on random projects that consume hours without you noticing.

The AMV is for Uninhabited Planet Survive (ooh, surprise?) and inspired by

sailormac and her post on the bashing of female characters. This one is a tribute to the girls of UPS. I'm using music that *I* like, so not everyone else will like it.

If I finish it (looks promising at this stage), I'll put up a link here to share with whoever's interested.

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I'm definitely be interested in seeing it. I can't count how many anime series I've gotten interested in watching because of someone else's AMV. Not to mention that I enjoy seeing how others edit their vids and try to learn from them.

You probably won't learn anything from my video - it's nothing special. ;) But I'm glad you want to see it! I really love your AMVs, so it makes me both excited and nervous that you're going to be watching mine. I know it's nowhere in your class, but... I'm having fun with it. :D

Don't be nervous - just make the vid you want to make, and to hell with everyone else. Simple vids frequently do more for me in terms of enjoyment that layer upon layer of special effects, transparencies, and the dreaded flash-to-the-beat. If you don't mind divulging, which editing program are you using - Windows Movie Maker, Adobe Premiere, or something else?

I'm actually using Virtual Dub - but the clips it creates from my source video are AVI files and really huge, so I have to convert them to MPG before I can use them. The quality of the video will be average at best, I'm afraid - but still a few cuts above the best I can get Windows Movie Maker to produce for me.

On a totally different note, how do you get words into the video? (just to say what song and anime I'm using, and that I made the thing)

Are you converting to mpeg-1 for file size reasons, or other reasons? mpeg-2, unlike mpeg-1, supports different bitrates (mpeg-1 is 1150 kbps, but I've encoded vids up to 8000 kbps for AMV contest entry in mpeg-2 format) and different size video (standard for vidding is 720x480, but mpeg-1 is something like 352x240). Granted, mpeg-2 files are larger than mpeg-1 files, but it might be something worth looking into if .avi compatibility - or lack thereof - is an issue. (Though not knowing how far along you are into the vid, I don't know how much of it you'd really want to re-do anyhow. I've only ever once gone back to re-capture footage when it turned out badly artifacted the first time; it's usually not worth the hassle, especially if the end result is just going to be mpeg-1 and not entered into a contest, anyhow.)

Sorry if that got a little too technical there. I've heard of people making vids in Virtual Dub though having used the program only a few times, I haven't the slightest idea of how it's done. Are there tools available in Virtual Dub to do things like crossfades and transitions, or are you relying on timing to cut between scenes?

On a totally different note, how do you get words into the video?

For the WTF animated bumper, I just plop in a .mov that Starherd made into my timeline at the beginning of the vid when I'm done. For the specific title cards, I use a special titling program in Adobe Premiere to create them, and then plop them into my timeline and fade or use transparency as necessary. I don't know what your options are for Virtual Dub, but you might be able to make something quick and dirty in Windows Movie Maker, export it as a .avi or .mpg, and then tack it onto the beginning or ending of your vid. Alternately, I seem to recall there at least used to be some kind of subtitling plugin for Virtual Dub that might be of help. At worst, you could try making the title cards in a graphics program (Photoshop, PSP, Paint) - being careful to remember your vid's dimensions (720x480 or 640x480, most likely) - and see if you can import them into your project and put them at the end of the video. It's not fancy, but it might work. Again, I'm guessing here because all I've ever used Virtual Dub for was the rip the audio track off of a video for re-encoding when it the original video wouldn't play properly on our Mac. ^^;;

If you'd like to try out Premiere at some point, I've got a copy of 6.0 I can send your way via YouSendIt.com if you'd like. Just let me know.

*cough* They're mpeg-1. 352x240 is the size you're getting, I'm afraid. It's small, but... well... space on my harddrive for clips and re-edits of clips is limited, so I really had to go with that. Virtual Dub makes huge files, and I can't figure out how to make it compress them and still be able to use them later.

If there are tools for crossfades and transitions, I haven't found them. I did a bit of messing around, but couldn't find a heck of a lot. This means the video is kind of (read: very) rough, but that can't really be helped. I guess you should be braced for disappointment, because there's no way I'm starting over now. ^^;; I'm at the point where I'd sooner slit my wrists.

But, YES to your offer! My god, that would be awesome! It's too late to use for this video, but hell, I might try to remake it some time, and I wouldn't mind doing more AMVs in the future.

Thank you so much for offering!

'sokay, mpeg-1 is perfectly serviceable for AMVs. It's what I use for the vids I distribute online (.avi and high quality mpeg-2 renders are available if someone asks, but because of a certain unnamed plagiarizer, I don't distribute them regularly). And I know what you mean about file sizes - when I'm making an AMV, I basically have to go through my laptop's hard drive and clean off anything I'm not immediately using, like my iTunes folder (ripped music) and the Shared folder of anime to watch. My projects usually take up 10-20 GB while I'm working on them, though once they're done I go through and delete what I don't use, which brings it down to about 3-5 GB. It's a huge space eater.

I was just curious about the crossfades and such - I've seen people do them in Windows Movie Maker, so I wasn't certain if there was a tool for doing it in VirtualDub. And like I said earlier, don't worry about it - I'm interested to see how you compose it and put the whole thing together. It sounds like you've put a lot of thought into it, and the fact that you're trying to time it to the music already takes it out of the "rough" category for me.

Though another question, if you'll indulge me - are you using subbed footage, or are you using Virtual Dub to cut out the subs? (Or did you somehow get your hands on raw footage? It's out there for many series, though you pretty much have to grab it as it comes out if you want it)

I just finished uploading the zip file to YouSendIt.com with Premiere. It should have sent an email to the one in your livejournal profile (the yahoo.ca email address). If you didn't get it, let me know and I'll post the link here for you. While I can't personally completely verify it works - I use Premiere 6.5 on the Mac instead - I've sent this version to at least five other people and no one has complained to me yet of any problems, so it should be good. I do know for a fact that at least one of them has used it for vidding since I sent it to her.

I think that covers everything for now. Good luck with the rest of the vid. I can't wait!

10 - 20 GB... wow. It doesn't sound like I'll be doing anything of a higher quality than mpeg-1 for a while. ;) But then, I don't plan on entering contests any time soon, either.

I don't know what people do with Windows Movie Maker to get decent videos out of it. I can't seem to get anything better than a really fuzzy, slow result. It was why I never made AMVs until I realized Virtual Dub allowed you to make clips, trim and edit them, and put them together. That's basically what I'm doing to make this one. I suppose it's amateurish, but I'm having fun and if the vid's crappy, well, I'll try again and see if I can't do better next time.

If there's raw footage for this anime out there, I've never come across it. I'm actually cutting out the subtitles with Virtual Dub - it means the footage loses a bit of what was originally onscreen, but the subs weren't taking up that much room at the bottom, so it doesn't make a huge difference. And I found subs really took away from some AMVs I've seen, so I wanted to not have them in mine.

I got the email from YouSendIt, and I'm downloading the file now. Thank you again! I'll probably start playing with it once I'm done with the current AMV... if I try it before this one's done, I know I'll end up wanting to re-do it. There are some rough places that could really use transitions that I don't have to give them.

I really don't want to have to start all over again... *eyes the newly downloaded file* But... then again...

I capture my footage directly from DVD in DV format using a firewire bridge. It gives me beautiful looking (but obscenely large filesize) clips to work with when I make vids. That's how my vid folder gets so big - I never know what I'll need, and it's a pain in the butt to hook up the firewire bridge to capture, so I tend to go through the series and grab whatever I think I'll want. Definitely not space efficient, but time efficiency matters more to me in the end.

I'm not quite sure what the secrets are to getting nice quality vids out of Windows Movie Maker, but I'm pretty sure that Arigatomina uses it for her vids, and I know I've seen some nice WK vids that have used it exclusively as well. It might be a matter mostly of how good your source footage is (dvd rips vs. fansubs vs. stealing footage from someone's AMV) and how well you encode your final product (in kbps, specifically). If I remember, I'll try to ask Fungie about it the next time I see him online - I'm pretty sure he's used WMM for his older vids before I sent him Premiere.

Good call on the subs, btw. It takes more effort but it really makes a difference I've found - not just for the viewer, but also for the vidder. I've seen many a vid with subs where a scene drags on and on with nothing going on in the background (except in some cases, flapping lips, which is just as bad) because the vidder was too interested in what the subtitles said in relation to the song for the vid. There's actually a rather cute KenOmi vid I found a couple years back that suffers from that problem specifically. The only trick is to making certain you snip the frames without subs as well, so that the vid remains a uniform size and aspect ratio to the viewer. (In other words, so that heads and bodies don't become misshapen from scene to scene - does that make sense?)

In case you're interested, the best place I've found for getting raws - outside of actual dvds themselves - is a group called l33t-raws, who usually put up torrents shortly after the episode airs in Japan. Unfortunately, not too long after the episode has aired, the torrent tends to stop being seeded. I've been attempting to get my hands on Sukisyo for my next vidding project, but so far I've had very little luck with bit torrent on it. I've got a friend trying to get raw eps 10-12, which is probably the best I'll be able to do for the vid unless I run across some HK bootlegs.

And since this is getting long and the husband is getting impatient (he's waiting to watch ep 40 of KKM in the living room) - one last night. Before you scrap everything, consider trying what Starherd does with her vids. She does the rough simple vid in iMovie (or, in your case, perhaps Virtual Dub), and then imports a compatible file (probably an mpeg-1 for you) into Premiere and does the finishing touchs by sticking the vid into the Premiere timeline and working with it there. In other words, you could makes the rough vid and then perhaps add in fade-to-black/cross dissolves in Premiere later. That way, you could still have your original if you're not happy with what you did in Premiere. It's a thought. Granted, Starherd uses it for more complex stuff like transparencies and overlays (iMovie has dissolves, at least), but it might be a way to make the vid more to your vision while learning a bit about Premiere along the way.

Or it could be more of a hassle. ^^;; Either way, you'll know what you want to do when the time comes. Good luck!

Thanks so much for the advice! I'm going to mess around with Premiere and see what I can do. I'm thinking I'll import the entire beginning part (since it's all lip-sync stuff, and I can't remember what I did to make the mouth movements fit the words) and just add some transitions. But maybe redo everything else with separate clips. I still have the clips I edited, so I should be able to fit them in as long as I keep track of the order. And I might be able to make it look neater.

It's worth a try, anyway. And I'll keep a copy of the original just in case.

I do have to re-edit a bunch of clips since I didn't think of what you said about the subtitles when I was editing them out of some shots. It looks okay to me, but... better to be safe.

Thanks again!

Oooh, an AMV! Sounds really interesting!

...Now if only school wasn't ending for me on such a work-filled note, I could get back to watching UPS. D:

*laugh* School always ends on a work-filled note. ;) It's like a law or something.

I hope you'll like the AMV. :) You'll let me know what you think of it when I manage to get it done and you can watch it, right?

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