Looking for a previewer...or maybe just advice.

[SarahtheBoring]

Okay, my third video (it's gaming, so if you absolutely hate that then feel free to disregard this ) is *nearly* done. And up to the bitter end, one aspect of it is still bothering me. And I'm not sure what to do at all.

The song I'm using is relatively rhythmic. In particular there is a repeated synth/percussion line in otherwise "low" points of the song (no lyrics or anything else going on) that I feel like I should use for some sort of syncing. It repeats at maaaaany many points throughout the song. And for most of those instances, the clips I wanted to use did have points in them that were keyed to those beats, no problem. (Lightning strikes and whatnot.)

But... many of the other clips don't have anything to sync to. They're usually smooth zoom-ins of something or other (not my zooming, the source's).

And my problem is, do I attempt to add something, some sort of distortion or something, to key into those beats, since there's nothing going on in the source to sync to it? And if so what do I do? I've tried about six different effects so far (cutting to black, changing the brightness, warping, zooming in and then back, etc.) but none of them seem like they FIT that much. (I wanted to get an effect like the "camera" was shaking, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet. I'd hate to try and get it wrong. :p)

So the essential question is, leave the smooth clip as is or distort it, and if so, what recommendations for a distortion might a more experienced editor make?

If anyone wants to view an intentionally low-quality preview version of this video just for this purpose, it can be downloaded (directly) here:

<a href="http://uvl.iwarp.com/projects/deadofnighttest.avi">"I Always Cheered for the Villains" **Preview**</a>

If the link breaks, it probably means I took it down... or... something weird happened with my server. (It WAS being a twerp when I was uploading, so you never know.)


Details about the video:
Title: "I Always Cheered for the Villains"
Genre: Humor, character profile of sorts
Source: Final Fantasy 5 through 9, spoilers for 6 through 9; Depeche Mode, "The Dead of Night"
Codec: DivX;-) AVI (yes yes, I'll export it as something else for the final cut).
Size: 14.6MB.

The parts I am mostly concerned about are:
- Shot of Jenova around 1:45
- Shot of ghosts right after that
- Shot of winged Kefka around 2:15, the second half of that clip
- Shot of Lunatic Pandora around 3:30

Please don't snipe at me over the quality, because I KNOW it's bad. ;P That's so this test wouldn't eat up the bandwidth I'll need for the actual video.

Any comments about that particular problem would be greatly appreciated. There are still a couple more tweaks I have to make to the rest of the video, so I apologize for that. (If you have problems with the rest of the vid, um... that's what the opinion list will be for when it's actually out. ^_^; )

Hope this made sense. Thanks in advance!

[silver_moon]

Hello fellow Final Fantasy MV creator,

I watched your video and I think I might be able to help you one some points. I'm a relatively new creator myself, but I have some experience in the FF-video-making field.

Important question: are you using Premiere? I'm assuming you are for the time being.

I noticed that at all the parts where you slowed down clips the picture looks all jagged. This is a very common problem, and can be fixed very easily. If you're using Premiere, just right-click on the clip you slowed down select Video Options > Field Options and then uncheck the box that says "Deinterlace when Speed is Below 100%". Do this for every clip you slowed down. This should fix the problem and make the clip run much smoother.


[/quote]I wanted to get an effect like the "camera" was shaking, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet

To get that effect, I think basically all you have to do is split the clip into sections then apply a different zoom effect to each one. I never used this effect myself, but I'm pretty sure that's how you do it. Use the razor tool to split the clip then you can set the zoom effect under Motion in the Effects Control Panel. Choose a start and end point for the clip's motion then fiddle with the zoom button. Do this for each seperate clip segment. It should end up looking like the camera's shaking.

I think using a black-and-white effect could really add to the mood of this piece, especially in the middle somewhere.

What else is a really cool effect is when you do an overaly of a zoom effect. In other words, a clip that has a semi-transparent overlay that does a zoom effect over top of the original clip so that it looks like there's a zoom effect in the foreground and an un-modified clip in the background. I really hope you know what I'm talking about. In Yakumo's FF10 video "Fantasy Rollercoaster", he used this effect a lot. Give it a download, it's worth seeing if you haven't already seen it. I used this effect quite often in my current project and it's one of my favorite effects. I think this would be a good effect to use at the shot of Jenova at 1:45.

For the ghosts right after that.... hmmmm.... try doing a fade to black-and-white then fade back to colour in time to the music or something. Try that for the winged Kefka at 2:15 also.

For the lunatic pandora, I saw this black thing for a second. Was that intentional? I think it would look really good if you used the black overlay and went fade-to-black-overlay then back to the picture and repeated that a few times in time to the music.

Argh, this is hard to explain, and I probably just confused you more. Feel free to ask more questions.

Words of advice: if you know what you want done to a clip, do it. If you don't know how to do it, find a way to do it. That's a good part of what MV-making is about: getting ideas then making them happen. You have to make them happen, otherwise you won't be satisfied with the result. Usually the manual tells you all you need to know about effects. If you see a cool effect in a video and want to use it, think about what the effect is and how you can make it using the tools you have.

Wow, I jabbered a long time and I probably didn't make any sense... but I tried.

Very original video by the way... I have never seen an FF video quite like this one. And just a suggestion.... but I think it might be good for the video if you cut out some of the more repetitve parts in the middle. It's just a suggestion though, do whatever you want with your own artwork.

Hope this helped.

[SarahtheBoring]

Thanks, I'll have to try a couple of those ideas out. The zoom-over-non-zoom idea sounds interesting (though the fact that it's been done before kind of worries me. :/ )

And the black flash in the Pandora part WAS left over from an earlier experiment. ^_^;; Oops. I went back and took out the effects I'd tried, but I guess I missed that one. Sorry.

I had heard about deinterlacing recently, and I did intend to try that. Thanks.

Repetitive parts? In the song or the video? I hate to bother you, but could you elaborate a bit? I did have a problem with repetition in the song, as after the second slow interlude it's pretty much repeat, repeat, repeat till the bitter end. ;P If that's dragging the video down I'd see what I could do to shorten it.

Anyhow, thank you.

[DiemondDagger]

Sarah,

When this project is complete PM me or AIM me at CitizenDarkskies, I'd like to see it.

Silver moon I'm still trying to collect yours ^_^

[SarahtheBoring]

Arghh... <i>if</i> it ever gets finished, I'll be sure to do so. Thanks.

[silver_moon]

SarahtheBoring: Don't worry about the fact that the zoom effect was used before, not very many people have used it since many people don't bother with digital effects in the first place. It's good to see any digital effect that's used well. For repetitive parts, I meant repetitive parts in the song. Because the song is repetitive, it also makes the video more repetitive. The video is already pretty long, so it might be a good idea idea to take out a part you don't think you need.

DiemondDagger: I don't use PM or AIM, sorry^_^

[Iamshadowkiller]

FF vids eh?...I have some experience in this myself ....I'll be glad to help you out if you can find me on AIM....or contact me somehow... 8)

[klinky]

Not a bad video

5Minutes tho for a game MV...

Anyways... You could always reduce the length of the songs.

Look into the volume rubber bands, that'll let you fade it out earlier and you can try your hand at hacking it up....


About the shaking camera idea, the "l33t" way to do it is to use the Image Pan effect under "transforms" with keyframes... Neither of which are hard to figure out. Look in the help file for keyframes.... and it should explain what they are.

<a href="http://coolantx.hn.org/media/pan-example.avi">This demo </a> gives a example of what can be done with it.. It's a crappy example made by yours truely on the spot here. Each segment has the image pan effect put on it.... There is zoom at the begining, some jiggle when he hits the colum and a zoom at the end.


~klinky

[SarahtheBoring]

I'm enthusiastic about trying to cut down the time, but yeah, the audio editing is beating me up. ^_^; You'd think an electronic-type song would have nice clean edges to cut off at, but such is not the case.

(Since the end strikes me as pretty nifty, I intend to try to cut out the next to last pair of choruses. I may have to outright stop the song and do something goofy to get it started again, we'll have to see.)

And yes, it is relatively long, but I think I only had to seriously stretch for about 10% of the clips. (And then, only because I suck. ) Hopefully this will help. And once that's settled I will try some of that stuff (probably working with transparent zooms as previously noted, maybe working my way up to the more complicated stuff. ^_^; )

And hey, I *wish* I could not use game stuff, but I don't have a capture card or a DVD drive yet, and I've heard how much everyone hates downloaded-footage videos. Eh, I'm still learning, anyway.

Thanks for all the help.