A fancy idea: Random AMV generator?

[BasharOfTheAges]

So it's a desktop-based auto-VJ tool. As a software person, I think it's a cool concept that needs a lot of refinement on video quality and clip diversity grounds... as a friend of someone that does VJ work I think it's a horrible idea.

[ButzYung]

So it's a desktop-based auto-VJ tool. As a software person, I think it's a cool concept that needs a lot of refinement on video quality and clip diversity grounds... as a friend of someone that does VJ work I think it's a horrible idea.

Hmm I am not sure if you can call this a VJ tool at all. I don't know much about VJ stuff, but it seems to me that they are more focused on real-time abstract and artistic effects rather than the AMV-style editing. In fact, this gadget was never intended to be a full-brown music visualization software at all. It was originally designed to be a simple "system monitor" that display user-defined animation (usually a sequence of images) based on the ups and downs of the system activities monitored, such as CPU/RAM/network usage. Later I tried adding "Sound output" as a monitorable activity... and it ended up that the outcomes looked quite interesting.

At this stage, the music visualization function of this gadget is still very simple. But then this gadget is tiny (usually no more than 130x130 pixels), so there is really no point to make it too complicated. Besides, my experience and observations tell me that sometimes all you need is a simple animation to visualize a song in an interesting way (still remember the Caramelldansen meme?). I am not really an experienced AMV editor myself (I just did a few some years ago lol), so I suppose some experienced guys here can give some ideas or make animations for this gadget better than I did.

[Vivaldi]

um... yeah that's kinda NOT what we do here. At this site we kinda like to do it the old-fashioned way. And if you want these AMV Generator things go to a different site that has one to generate your AMV. I don't know if it could be cataloged here though.

that's not what this thread is about.

Personally as programmer I'm somehow impressed of this (well useless but nice) gadget. I would keep on working on it. I would make something like a clip library and tag them with moods or something. Than I would get or write an algorythmen that analyzes the speed/modd/whatever of the song that's played or the action that is going on the desktop. When I get the mood/speed/whatever of the media I could easly visualize it with the tagged clips. I could use sappy-tagged clips for visualizing a sad song.

However I don't know why somebody would want such a useless thing. I bet it eats a fair amount of your cpu power and the library clips sure take some harddiscspace too.

On the other hand this technique has some potential. I have the feeling that there could be some great stuff with something that goes into this direction.

If any of those variables could actually be implemented and the frame size scaled up, it'd essentially be an "I win" button of sorts for youtube. Where output and and exposure are most important. With a carefully selected pool of clips, and possibly even pre-masked clips, I could see it contending plenty well.

[Beowulf]

NO NO NO NO NO NO STOP THIS AT ONCE STOP IT RIGHT NOW FUCK THIS THREAD

[Otohiko]

NO NO NO NO NO NO STOP THIS AT ONCE STOP IT RIGHT NOW FUCK THIS THREAD

[BasharOfTheAges]

So it's a desktop-based auto-VJ tool. As a software person, I think it's a cool concept that needs a lot of refinement on video quality and clip diversity grounds... as a friend of someone that does VJ work I think it's a horrible idea.

Hmm I am not sure if you can call this a VJ tool at all. I don't know much about VJ stuff, but it seems to me that they are more focused on real-time abstract and artistic effects rather than the AMV-style editing.

The concepts overlap pretty well if you VJ at anime con dances though.

[Panky]

While it must look cool, I don't think a thing like this could be avaible anytime soon. Though, I don't quite get from some posts what is the topic about, like generating a common AMV (.avi,.mp4,etc.) with an "intelligent" algorithm which takes up random clips to synch them to the upbeats of the song, or either something like a gadget showing up in the desktop.
Again, if its the first, it might be hard to do one because you would have to control when scenes change (abrupt change of colors, or something like that), pick them up and put them in, check well the transitions; and I don't know if it would be worth the effort. The tube would be x30 more infected with bad videos. Like, now people have to learn how to cut clips, but if they have a program that does all of that for them,then it's the end...

[Kitsuner]

While it must look cool, I don't think a thing like this could be avaible anytime soon. Though, I don't quite get from some posts what is the topic about, like generating a common AMV (.avi,.mp4,etc.) with an "intelligent" algorithm which takes up random clips to synch them to the upbeats of the song, or either something like a gadget showing up in the desktop.
Again, if its the first, it might be hard to do one because you would have to control when scenes change (abrupt change of colors, or something like that), pick them up and put them in, check well the transitions; and I don't know if it would be worth the effort. The tube would be x30 more infected with bad videos. Like, now people have to learn how to cut clips, but if they have a program that does all of that for them,then it's the end...

As long as it's working within the next seven years, we're in the clear.

[ButzYung]

While it must look cool, I don't think a thing like this could be avaible anytime soon. Though, I don't quite get from some posts what is the topic about, like generating a common AMV (.avi,.mp4,etc.) with an "intelligent" algorithm which takes up random clips to synch them to the upbeats of the song, or either something like a gadget showing up in the desktop.
Again, if its the first, it might be hard to do one because you would have to control when scenes change (abrupt change of colors, or something like that), pick them up and put them in, check well the transitions; and I don't know if it would be worth the effort. The tube would be x30 more infected with bad videos. Like, now people have to learn how to cut clips, but if they have a program that does all of that for them,then it's the end...

I must admit that the thread title is somewhat misleading LOL. A more accurate description of my "System Animator" gadget (talking about the music visualization function alone) is a "real-time music visualizer with an AMV-style visuals". In fact, the visuals don't have to look like an AMV at all. The following demo should give you an idea what else the music visualization can look like. It's really just up to your imagination.


(Click on the image for the video)

I don't know if Bauzi or anyone else is really going to expand my concept and develop a full-blown "auto-AMV" music visualizer... in fact I don't know if it's really a practical idea as an ultimate goal at all. At this stage, the approach I take for my System Animator gadget is very simple. Below is the usual procedure to build an AMV-like animation for my gadget.

1) Prepare some source clips, and cut out any scenes you want to use. This procedure is somewhat like designing a normal AMV, except that you don't need the idea of a specific music in mind.

2) Unlike building a normal AMV in which you sequence the separated scenes into a single linear animation, you keep the scenes separated (you can combine some shorter animations into a longer one, but generally speaking most of the scenes are still separated) and put each one of these partial animation (in the format of still frames or sprite sheet) into its own folder.

3) Turn on System Animator, put your animation set into it, play any music you like (it can be any other media player or anything that can produce sounds on your system) and the gadget will "shuffle" your animation set and play it in a random order, with its varying playback speed based on the loudness and FFT spectrum data of the music.

[Panky]

I get the point then. I saw the video, and yes, even though the "lip synching function" worked, it's still buggy, obviously, since it wouldn't really know how to match it, and to get it working ok would be quite a pain in the ass.
It looks pretty ok though, serves pretty well the point of a musical party background on the computer desktop.

When you added Michael Jackson, though, I thought you were going for Chuck Norris, Pikachu and spiderman and its band dancing.