Nothing wrong with any of the video this time. A few did 2-pass instead of CRF, but given the low complexity of all the videos it didn't hurt them any. Reviews will focus on the editing and thematics instead.
King of Hearts - Tie with the basic lyrics of the song was fairly loose, but overall theme fit wonderfully. Editing was fairly simple, but is just what was needed for this video; the focus was on the characters and the story, not the effects, but at the same time avoided dragging anything out.
Felt a bit too literal with the broom during the "sweeping" part of the lyrics. That was the only bit that really caught my attention, though.
Overall, excellent video.
Ringo Days - Matching the lyrics with the anime here is a bit of a stretch; I can see where it's drawing from, but overall fit is kind of weak. Stronger focus on effects than the King of Hearts video, and partly felt like that was to make up for weaker scene selection options. Use of black & white felt inconsistent.
Happened to watch this one with a friend of mine who's a bit of a film critic. His main complaint was excessive use of fade out/fade in. While the use of various effects in AMVs are often for a different purpose than for film, on a second watch through I can see where he's coming from; it did seem to draw away from the focus of the video, and became a bit of a distraction (too much black over the course of watching).
Minor lip sync issues (eg: ~0:34).
Generally good, but weak in a few noticeable areas.
St. Ryuk - Serious Title is Serious - Audio edits hurt it; they were very noticeable, and pulled me out of the video. Overall theme felt workable, but scene selection felt weak. Hard to pick out specifics; just didn't hold together very well.
Cybervida - First question: Is there a penalty for use of live action (ie: the original music video)? Contest rules, article 3, 4.4: "The video entries may only use Japanese anime...".
However, as an abstract video, it was pretty cool. Can't really comment on theme and such since it doesn't really apply. All I can say is that what it does, it does very well.
I Was the King - Not familiar with the anime, so I'm sure there are subtle references I'm missing.
Seemed to take certain lyric references too literally, in matching up video for it.
Ending clip and fade felt very out of place, used only to fill the time requirement.
War Dimension - Technically very well done, but really felt like the song and the video had almost nothing to do with each other. Very difficult to critique beyond that.
No idea what to make of the intro anime segment. The brief colored segment in the middle seemed like it would have done well as the intro while keeping the anime consistent.
The Quackening - Solid match for general concept. A couple of the lyrics/effects seemed to be taken too literally (eg: shattered windows; the default effect is pretty bleh, but I know it's difficult to find a good effect of that type), but at the same time somewhat appropriate, given the source.
Good integration of secondary video sources (eg: Saki, Utena). Nifty underwater interlude.
Overall, very well done.
RAWRAWd - Had about 20 seconds of actual video? With the rest being the headbobbing background track. Not a withdrawal, but sadly probably should have. The handful of effects seen indicate it could have been a pretty good video on technical merits, though.
Top picks:
King of Hearts
The Quackening
Ringo Days
Runner up:
Cybervida (a top pick if not penalized for live footage)
CodeZTM wrote:Also, can you please start putting names with these file names? I'd like to know who's editing what?
Yes, a standard naming format would be nice. Something like:
Editor - Title [Round info].ext
EG: "Cecco - Magicarl Dansen [Quickening 1.D].mp4"
instead of "magicarl Dansen.avi-zarx264gui.mp4", or whatever other random bit of text is thrown together.