What i've noticed lately in amv's

[Arigatomina]

I like lyric sync, but then, I rarely listen to music that has no lyrics. My problem with people who don't do literal lyric sync is that they don't do *any* lyric sync. Not only do they not match the meaning of the words (when it's their native language), but they don't match the sound of the words either. If you're not going to follow the meaning of the lyrics and build your story so it fits the 'concept' of the song, then the least you can do is follow the sound of the lyrics and model the story to fit the mood of the song. I don't mind videos that have no literal lyric sync, I watch Japanese song-vids and few bother to translate those. But when they ignore the words - not the meaning, the sound of the spoken/sung words - then they might as well have cut the lyrics altogether and done an instrumental song-vid.

With lyric sync that matches the meaning, most people have the scene choices reflect the meaning, and the editing reflect the music beneath those lyrics. And that's okay for me to watch. But when you disregard the meaning of the words, most people seem to disregard the sound of them as well. You end up with videos that are entirely beat sync in which the lyrics become as distracting as subtitles - because they aren't contributing to the video, and the creator went on as if they weren't there. Without meaning I take lyrics to be akin to opera music - think of how opera players move and do 'scenes' to match the pitches and changes, the sounds of the words, the mood reflected in the rise and fall, beginning and end of the words. You don't have to know what the words mean because the visual fits the movement of the words and forms its own meaning. That's non-literal lyric sync to me - matching the lyrics, just making up your own meaning as you go along. But that's not how people do it.

They say "literal lyric sync is boring" so they put a deaf ear to the words, not even treating them with the same attention (respect) as they would a guitar solo. They edit past them, beneath them, like going on as if you don't see the shifting logo covering half the screen. Sure, the video might fit the mood of the music well, and it might try to create its own meaning as if the lyrics weren't there, but it's no more fun for me to watch than a video with a huge divx logo flashing on and off in six or seven different colors and changing intensity throughout the video in complete disregard to the scenes playing beneath it.

But I hear lyrics over background music - that's why I think of it *as* background music. There are solos where the instruments are all that matter, but when there are words playing over those instruments, I hear it as background noise to go with the words. I default to seeing lyrics as a layer above the instruments. So when I see a video that only recognizes that background noise, I tend to be distracted by those ignored lyrics to the point where I don't get whatever meaning the creator was aiming for with his scene selection and cuts. All I see is scenes of lights and flickering still frames of faces while hearing words about how a person wants to walk away - no connection to any sort of 'meaning' for the lyrics and the scenes. So it's just a random action video to me. If it disregards the lyrics and does its own thing, the video is no different from an action video to something like LP's Crawling that pretends the 'narrator' isn't 'confusing things' or trying to 'find' himself - it's just random pictures playing beneath a rather interesting (but untouched) story. Those random action videos might have good editing and a nice mood to match the instruments, but I wouldn't rewatch them since they don't seem at all complete to me.

And videos featuring characters and building a 'drama' in disregard to the lyrics fit that definition of 'random' - only they aren't usually action vids, just random scenes set to music with an untouched lyrical story playing over it. Could have nice editing, but they still seem incomplete to me. I don't rewatch incomplete videos unless they're my own and I'm working to finish them.

[OmniStrata]

I'm not going to bash on anyone but this is my opinion.

I'm not for lyric synch anymore but well, it's just too easy. Now I'm using Jpop for my latest vids and now I'm getting people saying "If only I understood the lyrics..."

Bullshit I say...

Just edit and when people can't get what you're doing, then just go by the point that they could very well be less intelligent than you...

*shrug*