Quick Easy Survey For AMV Makers Of All Abilities

[Otohiko]

I made it started making it back on May 12th of this year and finished April 9th.

Scintilla would say 'ow' or something

I think you mean March 9th, probably.

***

Anyway, as for me - The Wasteland is probably my best vid, if that's what you want to call it.

Software: Premiere 6.5, along with Photoshop.

The thing is though, despite the fancy technology, it's a rather un-fancy video that could probably be done just as well in a simpler program.

What it used? Several basic transitions (a couple of which most were somewhat ); some moderately fancy overlays - (a semi-transparent b&w bevel-embossed sequence repeating after the original sequence played; fast semi-transparent footage which was color-balanced to blue overwhelmingly, then blue-screened to achieve the right transparency pattern; and scrolling color-and-speed-adjusted bars of footage); and some cheap but fair-enough colored squares (mostly cut out from a grid, which was a semi-trasparent photoshop layer).

The overwhelming majority of the vid is A/B editing - I wish I could just stick to that. But noooo.... the temptation persists. Whatever

I would be quite happy with a program that did simple transitions/fades and overlays only, but it's a fact: Premiere makes those things considerably simpler and more precise.

[godix]

I have two I personally think are best for different reasons but it sounds like you're after the best in technical aspects. From a technical standpoint that would be my <a href="http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members ... >Ghibli</a> video. By far it was the most technically difficult video I've done but it suffers from the same thing most special effect laden videos suffer from, there's no real point to it beyond 'Hey, look what I can do'. It was done with Premiere and Photoshop and I doubt I could have done even half of it without those two programs (I'm not saying they couldn't be done, just that *I* couldn't do them).

Effects include HEAVY use of masking, HEAVY use of the transform filer (when I say heavy I mean almost every second of the video), overlays to make colored bars match the musc, several semi-tranparent overlays, cutting out and pasting characters, color and brightness corrections to various clips, a lens flare modifed with blurring and weird positioning, various lighting effects, a screen captured winamp vizualization, a very subtile flashing effect (that no one but me ever seems to notice is there), lip syncing, and a whole bunch of different filters to make custom made borders pulse, change color, rotate, pixelatte, etc.


I wouldn't classify myself as a vertern but I have seen WMM make a difference in videos. Because of various features it lacks I've noticed that the good videos made in WMM are pretty much forced to rely on well choosen clips and conveying a some meaning. WMM is just too limited to pull off a 'Look at the pretty SFX' type video. Perhaps that's not a new thing though, despite Premieres popularity and it's capabilities I don't see many videos that do special effects beyond flashes and overlays even amoung videos made before WMM came out.

[genestarwind21122]

Yes I meant March 9th.

[shumira_chan]

Started six months ago, zero experience in all things
video (and it shows).

Videos:
http://amv.reimeika.ca

The quality is bad (my fault). No special effects (grew
up on VCR-made AMVs as it is, effects never really
appealed much to me). Not a split-second perfectionist
either.

Software:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~salsaman/lives/

Nice, simple, stable, and the coder is a great guy.
GPLed (actually, there's a lot more software involved,
LiVES is essentially a GUI with a "glue" backend
which uses many smaller programs).

Making the videos is half the fun, though, the other
half is actually helping develop the software:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lives-video/

After many discussions PNG-editing support has
been added, making it more suitable for making
AMVs. We are all learning a lot doing this, but it's
essentially the opposite of just using WMM, and
a lot more work. I do not see myself working with
more sophisticated editors, rather, I'd like to keep
helping making LiVES better...

Cheers!

[FoxJones]

I'm trying to see how much technology influences the creation of AMVs. So if you could list what you consider to be your "best" video, when you made it, what sort of effects you used, and what tools (programs, hardware, etc) it would really help me out.

Hmm.. hm.. I think I'll rank Sweet Feather as my best AMV so far. Made it with Vegas Video and vdub. I don't think I used more complicated effects than cross-images..

[DrngdKreationz]

IWell, just keep tacking on another program after another. once I find out dufferent benefits of using the other programs in order to accomplish something in an amv im working on. But its all adobe. Illustrator, Photoshop, premiere and after effects.

My best vid im always going to say is the one im going to be cranking out next. I know it sounds pretty weird but by the time im done with a vid I can't really rank them. they all have different reasons for being created and the final product always show a different standard or style. I guess I just like working on them more than I do just sitting back and watching them.

anyways thats my 2 cents

[SQ]

The obvious answer to what's used commonly is definetly Adobe Premiere.

But anyway.

I think my best AMV ever is "The Twin Star"(atleast right now), I used Adobe Premiere 6.0

It only took 14 hours and 7 minutes to complete, but it was spread out over just about a month. I think that process works better for your brain then lots of editing in one sitting. Anyway, the effects. Lots of fades and transparencies, as usual. Quick cuts, a few fading white flashes, and, near the end, sudden purple, blue, and white flashes. A roll(vertical) effect, one sharpened clips. All of X/1999 used image pan(to keep the aspect ratio clean). Only around 2 clips were sped up, while 1-2 clips were slowed down.

I started out using Windows Movei Maker, and all I can say about the differences is the exporting. Gyah. WWM's exporting features really sucked. You either ended up with insanely large files that looked bad, or insanely small files that looked worse.

I moved to Premiere because my parents gave it to me for either my birthday or christmas(can't remember), and I was like "YES!" and began to use it, learning concepts. Very complicated compared to WMM, but it does just about the same thing with more options.

One of the things that got me in WMM1, was that you couldn't edit things if they were under a set amount of time, no matter how far you zoomed in on the timeline. I think it was something like a half a second. In premiere, you can edit frame by frame, which I really like.

I've also used(and still am using for school) the Casablanca AVIO. It's definetly not worth the huge amount of money it costs. It's a box editor, and so it's not a program and it doesn't involve the computer.

It is basically the 2 VCR method with some better cuing and a ton of effects. It's hell to edit music videos with, but if you're doing a news story or something mainly involving multiple audio layers, it's really useful.

I'd say more about the AVIO, but it's not a program, so it probably doesn't matter.

/really long rant

[VicBond007]

I use After Effects 6. No really. That's about it. My Otakon video doesn't even have source video footage

When my first laptop got stolen, the replacement came with XP, and that day I needed to edit a project for film class, so I cut it in WMM. It was really easy and gave me what I needed to do what I needed to do. Wasn't worth keeping XP on my laptop though

[Sir_Lagsalot]

I'm rather proud of my Cloud Connected video: http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members ... hp?v=35844

The editing was done with Premiere 6.5, while many of the more complex effects were done using MS Visual C++ 6.0 (I'm an odd duck).
Took me about 3.5 months to get the video the way I wanted.