How do you consume AMVs?

[Gene Starwind 21122]

I rarely watch a stream of an AMV. Unless a friend forwards me a link, and still sometimes the quality suffers on youtube from not uploading correctly. I still download my AMVs from here. Of course I've been a round a while too. The time I do go on and stream on youtube 80% of the AMV's I tend to turn off 15 seconds in just because they were not good, at least from my perspective. Again the more widely something becomes available the lower the quality in most cases.

For example I use to collect baseball cards. However in the late 80's through the early part of the 2000's baseball cards were overproduce, saturated the market, and the quality went down. This is the same way with video games and other stuff.

So I think streaming has really hurt the true appreciation for AMV's, since it has become easier to get them online. Also the editing technology has become easier too, for anyone to throw one together. I was still teach script files to the audience at Nekocon and just confused a lot of them with my out of date editng style. lol

Anyways I prefer downloading still so that way I can have a copy of the video just incase it gets removed, or to show at conventions when there is no internet service.

Gene

[AceD]

So I think streaming has really hurt the true appreciation for AMV's, since it has become easier to get them online.

wat. No. People still appreciate good videos, like they always have done. Nothing has changed in that regard. Difference is there's a lot more people about now to appreciate it.

[Gene Starwind 21122]

What I mean by appreciation, it sort of like a treat. Instead of finding a few good AMV's to watch everyday, now there are many AMV's that look the same and the treat doesn't taste as good anymore.

If that makes sense.

[Ileia]

What I mean by appreciation, it sort of like a treat. Instead of finding a few good AMV's to watch everyday, now there are many AMV's that look the same and the treat doesn't taste as good anymore.

If that makes sense.

There have always been a swarm of mediocre AMVs that you had to dig through to find the good ones. Streaming has little to do with that. It makes both good and bad videos equally more accessible.



As for me, I stream videos first. If I like them, I'll download them. While not as good as a downloaded copy, Youtube has gone up in quality from the days of its inception, but the Org's streaming is pretty terrible. If the creator has made it available on Youtube, I always go there to watch it.

[Ardamaeus]

I remember it being the mid-2000's and I had a really crappy Internet connection. It sometimes took 5 hours to download a 40 mb AMV. Nowadays, I have a much better Internet connection, but I would still like to preview an AMV, whether it being on YouTube or a-m-v.org's preview function (that no longer works for new vids...XD...) before I download it if I like it ;3.

[Rider4Z]

If I come across a video that strikes me as one I really enjoy, i'll likely download it and keep my own "hard" copy. If I see one in a contest I really enjoy I will download that one as well, and possibly also buy the song.

If I have to download a video, for participating in AWA Pro per say, I will keep the video in my archive whether I enjoyed it or not. I kinda take inspiration from Vlad in that sense where he still has every single video ever entered in any of his contests from the past decade (or longer). And actually, I really enjoy running my own contests as well because that's been my new go to for new and exciting amvs. Keeps me in the loop on what's up and current.

[macchinainterna]

When I first got into the hobby I would download and watch a bunch of amvs every week. My interest has slowed down a lot since then. Now I mostly watch what videos my friends have made.

The best way for me to watch AMVs nowadays is really through NDK's contest and various panels whenever I manage to attend the con. It's best for me because that is my reason for being there, otherwise I would get distracted by something else and neglect to watch any videos at all. Panels and contests are what hold my attention completely, so that I can enjoy what I am watching.

[Qyot27]

Always download. Originally just because that was the only way to do it (prior to YouTube), then because it was better quality (often still is), and now mostly because my computer is way too ancient to watch things that are streamed, even if I wanted to. I actually have to download it so I can convert the format into something my setup can handle, but I did this anyway because I've been authoring virtually all of the AMVs I download to VCDs and DVDs for over a decade (even longer than I've been editing them or joined the Org, to be exact). The original copies of the files are backed up on Archive discs and redundant backup discs, both of which are indexed* (the DVDs are indexed*, too, for that matter) so I know where they are if I need to dig one out.

Most of the way I find things to watch is by browsing the Announcements section, which was the same method I used 10 years ago.

*or mostly indexed; I didn't start doing that for all my varieties of backups for a while. Most of these habits took years to evolve into the state they're in now.


When I say my computer is ancient, I'm not kidding. The CPU in this thing is a 1GHz Coppermine Celeron. Only the most inefficiently-encoded H.264 files have a good chance of playing smoothly on here. The AMVs I've put up for download since 2007 aren't encoded with my own computer's specs in mind, which I can get away with because I do multiple encodes from the same master file.

[GloryQuestor]

The CPU in this thing is a 1GHz Coppermine Celeron.

A computer tech once told me that "Celeron" was interpreted as a "lobotomized" Intel CPU, and I've had a P3 Celeron in the past, so I know how bad Celeron processors can be. I tend to avoid any CPU like that. -_-;
-----------------------------------------------
I do still collect from here, YT, and many others through judging contests and what I get from friends. Getting physical copies is still very important as I and others run (and help run) various AMV rooms at conventions, and self-contained databases played through a dedicated video player are still the norm.

[BasharOfTheAges]

People routinely throw away working computers newer than that.