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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

'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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only