What in the bloody smucks happened?

[Castor Troy]

Here's the old saying:

"90% of anime is crap. We only get what was good in Japan and 90% of that is crap"

[seasons]

Amount of videos cataloged each year:

2003: 16467
2004: 29896
2005: 38042
2006: 30343
2007: 16483
2008: 10225
2009: 8013
2010: 5617
2011: 4455

How in the world did people in the early years get anyone to watch their videos? The sheer amount of stuff being released every day must have made it really hard to get noticed.

[Knowname]

Before the org got hosting? Basically Kazaa/ Morpheas/ Napster. A few actually had money for their own server and some shared amongst their studio (see?? back than STUDIOS actually HAD a function other than penis measuring competitions!!) but many of us were on the p2p. you basically had to have it on all day and you never knew who you were sharing with :/. Most video pages on the org didn't have any d/l links, your best chance would be to catch the editor on the forum and ask directly for it. It was horrible and the org having FREE hosting was a GODSEND. Hosting typically was like 15 bucks a month for 100megs. I'm not too sure, but something like that (I never really even looked into it...)

[Pwolf]

Yea, the concept for free hosting didn't really exists back then. Our only options were to use someone else's paid hosting or buy your own, even then we had to deal with copyright/piracy rules. I went through several hosts myself and had my accounts shut down. Most of the problems were really due to using too much bandwidth and someone then saying "hey this looks illegal, GOOD BYE!". I've had my videos hosted on other people's sites and I've hosted other editors as well. I used to get e-mails from people every now and then telling me that they found my stuff on Kazaa also.

Before the org had hosting, there was the AMV FTP. It was more or less, IIRC, an invite only FTP site... at least I was never given access to it until the very end. I never really asked for access though Even with those options, a lot of us would swap cds/dvds of our videos at cons. I remember going to AX and during the AMV dinner, we would all just give each other cds/dvds. I still have a few of those disks laying around.

Between the org and youtube, all you youngins have it easy

[Knowname]

lol some of my first videos were (PURPOSELY) HORRIBLY encoded TINY AS A BUTTON videos JUST so it could fit in that 100mb limit and it wouldn't max bandwidth...

But yeah, now that I think of it Seasons isn't asking about the PRE-hosting days, he/ she is asking about 2003/ 4 and so on, the days of 20k+ videos. those days were nice, mostly because of the feeling you get after doing something that's INCREDIBLY hard to do ie the stuff we referred to before. after that, the org got hosting and everybody just had a STRONG feeling of relief to FINALLY have a stable hosting service, PLUS WE DIDN'T HAVE TO PAY FOR IT!! (lol though many of us donated... at least...) so basically we just made amvs for the heck of it.

Plus pre- Youtube lots of ppl posted up their "LinkinballZ" type amvs they cooked up in 10 minutes. Now most of those go to Youtube, but before the org was the only player!

PLUS in the early days older videos had to be uploaded too... since the org didn't HAVE hosting back before the days of Euphoria.

[Zarxrax]

Back in the days when lots of videos were coming out, this is when we had everyone complaining about "linkinball z" videos. Because basically, the vast majority of those huge amounts of videos were made in a couple of hours in windows movie maker, and most likely used dbz or linkin park. Most of them were never announced on the forums.

Also, good videos came out much more frequently back then. The video announcements forum was really alive and kicking. People checked it often because there was frequently some really cool stuff to be found.
Also, there were lots more actual viewers on the site, so their were also more eyeballs to watch all the vids being released.

[pacotacoshell]

People got lives.

This is something that is mentioned every time this sort of topic comes up. It's not that everyone stopped editing. Sure, a lot of people did. But guess what? They were replaced by new editors, there is a constant stream of them! They're just not flocking here anymore. It's not AMVs that are dying, it is this specific community.

It's sad though that alot of the newer editors don't even choose to come here or upload here, while just staying on youtube. Why not have your amv there and here. There's so much more benefits here. I started amvs on youtube for half a year before joining here, and there wouldn't be a single day where I would think of choosing youtube over here if I was ever forced to only have one.

I agree. In the perspective of a new editor wanting to become good at this craft, I don't get half the constructive criticism on Youtube than I do on here, even if a lot of people aren't posting on annoucement threads. But when people do, they give me detailed explanations showing me how to make myself better at editing. On Youtube, it's so extremely hard to find new people to meet. There's just too much clutter of random people to sift through to get to the people that are worth talking to. On these forums, it's so much easier to talk to the community as a whole and to get help with everything. The community here are all really friendly and helpful, rather than the people that just watch your videos on Youtube and go "o cool this is good anime thumbs up if u agree" The AMVs are all lined up by genres, song titles, editors, and all that. They have downloading and watching of videos on here. What else do you need for this to be better? :l

[gotegenks]

more convenient uploadability, simpler video information entering process, embeddable previews available to everyone, and small communication promoting things like journal replies and open commenting on videos and something REALLY SILLY that could be cool would be profile comments.

just my opinion. Org is in no way a superior site just more AMV oriented (naturally) with a community suited to its members + free hosting. But hey, that's money for ya.

[lloyd9988]

Sounds like the same argument on repeat about how there were so many people here at one time and it eventually died. :/ Honestly, youtube, as stated many times before, is a place where AMV editors don't really care about wanting to get better, they just want positive praise from everyone else, from their family and friends and online communities. Course, that's overgeneralizing a whole population of editors into one category which probably isn't completely true. Maybe there are many other editors out on youtube who want to get better but just don't know where to go. The org just looks like (I can't say for certain) a place where if an editor wants to get better with their editing style, they would most likely come either here, amvnews or join a *Decent* studio. Not to mention, when people watch AMVs, they don't come here to watch them, they go to youtube and, thus, they post their videos on youtube because they think that all the great AMV editors got their start on youtube and just making AMVs only on youtube. Maybe I'm overgeneralizing too much but its just kinda what I'm seeing from a noobie's perspective.

One plan that I think might work if you guys do want to make the community bigger is just give an intro or ending with the website's name to all the users so they can post it in the beginning or ending of their AMVs. Might work since they can post that intro or ending on youtube.

Between the org and youtube, all you youngins have it easy

Damn straight

[Pwolf]

Kinda going back to the original topic, I'm pretty sure the number of users on the forum right now (seeing about 56 as of this post) is about the same as it was in 2005 and even later anyway. As I mentioned earlier, the only two major spikes were 1) when the org started offering hosting and 2) what I suspect was caused by spam bots on the date mentioned in the original post. As far as using the forum as a way to measure activity, it's not really a good place to start. you really have to look at the bigger picture and sample other data like videos uploaded/entered into the database.