Is Technical issues outstripping Artistic issues?

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Vlad G Pohnert
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Is Technical issues outstripping Artistic issues?

Post by Vlad G Pohnert » Wed Jan 01, 2003 4:56 am

Seems of late that everything about video seems to be stuck on the technical aspects of how perfection to the eye is seen and achieved. Funny thing to add is that I've seem videos that are very flawless in terms of picture quality do to etream attention paid to the technical side of things. But what about the artistic side of the video image (huuu? you ask).

What I mean here is that I think we as artists are getting way too stuck upon technical video perfection and maybe forgetting to worry about artistic video perfection. I'll be the last one to say I don't like to experiment to death with quality and do lots of tests, but I draw the line at some point and just go back to editing artistically and not worry about every molecular error and bad pixel in the video or how many technical hoops I need to get there.

Vlad

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klinky
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Post by klinky » Wed Jan 01, 2003 5:31 am

Yes! :p


In fact I find some of the older videos with semi-funky video quality to be charming.

Like Kusoyaro's Anime Passion or With Every Light.

The original Evangelion Opus was done using subtitled VHS tapes.

Kevin Caldwell's AMVs were done with captured footage and aren't markers for technical video quality, but are standards for artistic achievements. Look at Believe(at least the copy I have) it's pretty poor mpeg compression. But still people love it.

However with the advent of DVDs. People want to use them. It's alot nicer to have all your footage on your hard drive and be able to grab something if you need it.

The old days with a capture card. You'd have to hook up your VCR(or whatever source you had). Then capture to something like mjpeg, be careful not to use up too much hard drive space, plus finding the footage through all the tapes or LDs or whatever you had :p Not terribly easy.

From a technical stand point tho! Capturing from a analog source is easier then ripping dvds. DVDs are more technical.

Using a capture card, you can't IVTC & you capture at a set 4:3 resolution. Most capture applications that come with the card are easy enough. Set default hardware codec, fps, output file hit start, hit stop. Most people can manage that.

DVDs though. You have to rip the DVD. Worry about if the dvd is anamorphic. Pure FILM vs NTSC telecined. Also to get the DVDs working you have to muck with AVISynth. DVDs are just plain, more technical to work with.

The fact that most anime is coming out on DVD now, also that you can get a DVD drive for $30 + a 80GB HDD for $100. Is attracting more and more people who don't know exactly what they're getting into.

AMVs are attracting a much larger base of people then they were say 2yrs ago. We have alot more people creating stuff and when they come and complain about the DivX crashing Premiere. Or when they have a bunch of interlaced lines running their their video. You want to say "Hey here's how to do it right!".

Some people don't know how to change the extension from avs.txt to just plain .avs. Or the concept of creating a "script file" in the first place. IVTC is a sticky concept as well. Also working with the latest and greatest codecs and the fact that a 3GB video is NOT "huge".

If you're happy with the way your videos look, then I would just leave them the way they are. I don't think people though, are being forced to do %100 perfect quality on their AMVs. If they have a better method, then they can use it. It hasn't stopped the thousands of poorly done DBZ videos from popping up everywhere.

I think the main problem with AMV creation right now is SLOW COMPUTERS. Or crappy programs. Premiere is very frustrating to work with. After Effects has a poorly designed interface. I am not sure what's going on with Premiere, but I can't get it to export Alpha with a track matte, virtual clips are one of the features that could be most useful, but end up being useless due to poor design. The de-interlacing in Premiere is horrid(the inability to have it turn off automatically when you slow a clip down is annoying).

Plus Premiere is just plain slow. I know for a fact you can render three transparent bitmaps quicker then what it gives you. It just seems slow and sluggish and when you're waiting to see if a 2second effect works out and it takes 2minutes to render, instead of doing multiple renders and perfecting it, I say "it's good enough".

:\

There's nothing striving for best quality and with DVDs you're kind of forced into it. So ^_^ do whatever is best for you ;)


~klinky

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Vlad G Pohnert
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Post by Vlad G Pohnert » Wed Jan 01, 2003 5:44 am

Actually, even with DVDs there can be technical limits so as not to slow the artistic side. I realize DVDs have way more technical issues, but my point is that the current trend is technical quality and artistic quality is almst taking a back seat sometimes...

Quite honeslty, we humans always come up with great things like desk top video editing and then turn them into nightmare by introducing a million standards and ways of doing things. Hence the codex, editing software, nightmares!

Vlad

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klinky
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Post by klinky » Wed Jan 01, 2003 5:55 am

People who have good ideas ^_^ Will use the good ideas.

Me I don't have good ideas, I get hung up on them :p.

Actually I am having more problems on perfecting my artistic side. I also think. It would be better if I could only do this and then I see all the hassle it would be to do something like that and I end up not doing it.

DannyWilson's not another anime trailer, is extremly funny and does not have the greatest video quality. I don think it's a bad video and the quality doesn't get in the way.

I actually just found out that one of my favorite videos. Goo Goo Dolls Iris, to Pefect Blue, was made using two VCRs O_O

http://eternity8.sempai.org/anime/musicvideos.php

The quality is really not that great, it's a quicktime file that's around 240x180. But I still watch it and enjoy it because, I just like it and do. I've never e-mailed the guy and said that his quality sucked :p

OK, I think it comes down to the fact that we can teach things like how to get DVD footage, how to make it look it's best, but it comes down to the individual creating his own style. You can show them how to make the screen flicker, how to do a split screen, a cross dissolve. It's up to them to use it though.

It's still all lands in their lap to produce their video. We can't make a true standard for artistic quality, since something that is crap for one person, is GOLD for another. It varies with people.

How exactly do you think we should encourage people to use their artistic sides more and did you come up against a particular problem that made you go "screw this, I don't care".

The guides are there to show you how to use DVDs and make your encodes look their best. Rather you follow them or not is up to you.

You can write a guide to tell you how to make most any DVD look it's best, but you can't write a single guide to make any song match the footage it's best. It all depends....


~klinky

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klinky
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Post by klinky » Wed Jan 01, 2003 6:13 am

I've yet to see this happen :P

Image


~klinky

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AbsoluteDestiny
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Post by AbsoluteDestiny » Wed Jan 01, 2003 8:31 am

Well, the technical side requires mostly knowledge, partly skill but no talent.

I think it's fair to say that people can, and do, still appreciate talent, even if it isn't manifested with technical skill.

I was, however, disappointed in a review I got for one of my less technical and effects-based video which I will quote but leave nameless:

"Effort: After what you mentioned in the description and Shameless Rock Video, I see only a fraction of what you normally do here."

OK, so I didn't have to spend months developing effects for the video... but that's because the video didn't need anything more than it had. It was a clips and timing video, with a little bit of clever frame adjustment for synching. It wasn't Art, but it was entertainment and in my opinion a good music video.


OK, let's narrow the argument down to two elements... are people finding the following more important than artistic quality in videos:

1) Basic visual quality - I don't think people really are judging how good a video is by how good it looks. However, given recent advancements in digital techniques it is desired by the viewer to have a video they enjoy to be looking great as well and as more videos are encoded better then comparisons are made.

2) Digital efftects - I don't like the trend where the only good videos are effects videos but thankfully I don't think that's a very popular trend. I think most people know that effects are just dressing but people do tend to give them more merit than they are worth. I'd like to think the best parts of SRV are the action synched events which weren't in any way different to what KC did in Caffeine Encomium. Similarly, I'm sure Vlad would prefer Transcending Love to be thought of as a great drama video rather than a great After Effects demonstration.


So why aren't people more concerned with the artistic quality of an image? Well, I don't think everyone knows how to analyse a video like that - or at least articulate such an analysis - lots of people just get a feeling about whether something works or not. One of the numerous things which distiguishes accomplished video editors from less accomplished ones is the ability to understand how visual elements fit together - why one scene should or should not follow another etc etc.

As I say, I don't think people are underestimating these things but they aren't always easy to discuss. It's easy to say "this video suffers from too many lossy compressions", but less easy to say "the unbashed splicing of elements from radically different scenes really confuses what is trying to be a succinct narrative. You need to focus more on the consistency of the images rather than forcing disperate elements together to try and fit a lyric."

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Paul Kievits
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Post by Paul Kievits » Wed Jan 01, 2003 10:57 am

I agree with you but somewhat hesitantly. People just tend to know more about encoding and the likes these days (I still know shit, Ian knows all about that). It's a good thing that the encodes keep improving but some people do tend to over obsses and take it as a judging merrit. It's not that people don't want to make a good video, they are just executing their ideas and trying to make the best video they can, it's just that not everybody has the artistic talent to do so. It could be that they're overcompensating for the lack thereof but it seems unlikely. Video quality is just a big plus, it shouldn't be overobsessed upon but it does give your video a little extra boost.

... crap even I lost track of what I was trying to say, I hope some one can decyfer this and get the message.
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RadicalEd0
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Post by RadicalEd0 » Wed Jan 01, 2003 12:32 pm

I cant make a good music video for my life. But if I can make a bad music video and make it look really good, it makes me feel a little bit better :p

Honestly though I think I did have alot more ideas before I got into the technical aspect of video. Actually, amvs are what led me into encoding and stuff and I just ended up going with that for awhile. Now its much easier for me to prepare content perfectly than it is to actually come up with content that works :\ but I'm sure I'll have a stroke of artistic genious one of these days, I just havent been trying.. yes, thats it.. yes..
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Vlad G Pohnert
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Post by Vlad G Pohnert » Wed Jan 01, 2003 6:21 pm

Good point have been brought up. The trend I've been seeing is a lot of tech talk, its enjoyable and refreshing to just here artistic talk.

Me personally, if I start to get worried over the technical side too much, ot means my artistic side suffers since I can't enjoy just making it but have to worry about someone pointing out that my videos aren't up to quality specs!!

Yes, you are right AD, I would rather have my Transcending love video be a drama rather ran a special of visual effects. Of course when it only viewed for it’s technical aspects, it gets to be very frustrating for that reason. That’s one of the reasons I thing my Memories Dance video is my most favorite since I never let the visual effects dictate my artistic side of things. I now realize this is more of the direction I would like to go…

I think that AMVs are going the way of movie making. These days the big bucks and resources are spend in the special effects to make the journey for the audience realistic. Yes, I think they are important and there is nothing wrong with then, but much more time must be spent on developing the idea and story as well.

In the end, it's us the creators that drive this. If we all put down videos because of quality, then AMV creators will tend to worry more about the technical quality of an AMV rather than what the idea and artistic side.

This is really one thing I dislike about the the direction the AWA Masters contest is going. People are starting to see it as "My video must be technically perfect or it wound stand up". I'm sure the contest intent isn't that, but that's what the general consciences is like. I know of a lot of talented creators that do not want to enter it for this reason. I really do like the concept behind the contest and feel that the intent is that artistic content outweighs technical contest. Now I’m not saying technical content is not important, but does it have to go under a microscope!!!

I personally seem to have become more worried to what people will say about the quality of my videos rather than the artistic side myself. This is a trend I think that will take away from my videos in the end and I and reconsidering this of trying to achieve video perfection to please the audience watching it and not getting labeled by all the tech gurus and my videos being "technically inferior" in favor of artistic and emotional merits

I think we should try to hold back all this techno scrutiny to a point and not try to discourage people who may not be as technically inclined or educated. I think guides like AD's and ErMaC's are a great idea and more should exist to help people get the most of their video quality wise since they don’t discriminate or have an opinion to any given video out there.

I also think that having in the reviews, artistic talent and creativity should not be on the same level. As AD pointed out, technical stuff can be learned by anyone if they really take the time, but artistic talent and story ideas must be developed and can't be done just by reading a guide. I personally enjoy using my artistic side rather than spending countless hours learning all the technical stuff in fron of my computer!

So lets not get too hung up video quality here and get back to the real reason of making music videos in the fisrt place!

Vlad

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Mechaman
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Post by Mechaman » Wed Jan 01, 2003 7:00 pm

I think the main problem with AMV creation right now is SLOW COMPUTERS. Or crappy programs.
Fortunately, I no longer have these problems. EVIL-LAUGH-HERE.

Although to be serious: The other problem I see more and more is that people think that con competions are the only thing that matter. And of course they want to set themselves apart from the "Susie that used a few Cartoon Network SM episodes", or they don't want to lose to somebody else who made an effect-video, so they knock themselves out on technical quality rather than thinking more about their idea. It's like the 90's of web-design: doing a complicated one requires technical skill, but the succesful ones are by people that don't let the framework drive the content.

I further think people need to go out to left field for more ideas, and not to be afraid of doing fun videos(rather than contest flagships), either. "Not Lupin" is a pretty half-hearted beatmatching idea ejected after about a weekend, but I had great fun doing it, and puzzled out a few more ideas while making it.

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