Noobie AMV pitfalls - advice from the veterans?

BishounenStalker · Post by **BishounenStalker** » Sat May 07, 2005 9:36 pm

The #1 pitfall of every bad AMV has more to do with concept than anything. Overusing song/anime combinations and doing nothing to distinguish your AMV from the other 9,000-odd ones like it is the biggest. Generally, people get sick of seeing the same thing over and over again.

But other pitfalls include editing and technical aspects, such as:

- Total lack of beat-matching. If your song has a solid beat, it's important to pay attention to it and try to time your scene changes or action sequences (such as fight scenes) with prominent drum beats. How you decide to do that is up in the air. Some do it by action alone, some use white flashes, some use strobing...whatever works for that particular AMV.

- Total lack of lyric matching. Please, for the love of puppies, there should be at least some correllation between the lyrics of the song and what's happening on the screen. It doesn't have to be literal, but it should be there.

- As someone already said, subtitles are one of the most common technical slip-ups. As a rule of thumb, fansubs = baaaaaaaaad. But sometimes, you don't have a choice but to use fansubs because domestic DVDs either haven't been released yet (such as One Piece), or the release has just started, and episodes are in very short supply (like Fullmetal Alchemist). Using fansubs comes with some extra work in the cropping department; if you're going to flout ethics for whatever reason, keep it under the rug. Crop your subtitles, please!

- For the love of kittens, deinterlace/IVTC your AMV. Before or after editing, nobody cares as long as it's done. Those Scanlines of DOOM are incredibly distracting.

That's all the major screw-ups I can think of right now. I know there are more, but I'm pretty sure that covers a lot of the more annoying don'ts.

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Sat May 07, 2005 9:38 pm

dokool wrote:
bum wrote:listen to dokool. He's a wise person who denies that his trip to japan had anything to do with the amount of asian schoolgirls their.
I've never even been accused of that connection, how could I deny it

Besides, they all have chlamydia...

I wish i kept the chat log from the first time i spoke to you on AIM... it went something like:

Bashar > "So what's Japan Like?"
Dokool > "The schoolgirls are real!"

downwithpants · Post by **downwithpants** » Sat May 07, 2005 9:56 pm

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/v ... php?t=2163
basically

don't stress out trying to perfect your first video though. there's a lot you will learn only after producing it. instead, have fun making it otherwise you might never enjoy the hobby. people will understand it's your first so don't worry about the gory details.

megaman917 · Post by **megaman917** » Sat May 07, 2005 10:12 pm

downwithpants wrote:http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/v ... php?t=2163
basically

don't stress out trying to perfect your first video though. there's a lot you will learn only after producing it. instead, have fun making it otherwise you might never enjoy the hobby. people will understand it's your first so don't worry about the gory details.

x2. What he said.

For many of us, progress is a slow process. And for many of us, new or veteran, it's all Trial & Error. So, always try to improve yourself with each video.

Org Profile · Post by **808-buma** » Sun May 08, 2005 12:11 am

dokool wrote: http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members ... hp?v=41561
Watch this video. It covers everything.

buahahaha - just what I needed - visuals on what not to do visually! Loved this AMV (or what not to do in an AMV). Thanks so much for the vid as it will help a lot.

BishounenStalker wrote: Overusing song/anime combinations and doing nothing to distinguish your AMV from the other 9,000-odd ones like it is the biggest.

okay, so, no Linkin Park / DBZ vids for me then

Gottcha! I think I've picked a not so used artist as well as a not very much heard song too, but am using Ghost in the Shell, which does seem at least a bit popular. Hopefully I can do it justice.

megaman917 wrote: One major pitfall is when the song you use doesn't relate to the anime used in the video in any way.

I think I've got this covered too - don't want to mention the song yet, so hopefully my judgement is good in this department.

and yes, I realize that most first-time AMV's will suck big time, but I just don't want mine to suck too much. Thanks for all the advice - and keep them coming! Us noobies need to know this!

megaman917 · Post by **megaman917** » Sun May 08, 2005 12:20 am

808-buma wrote:and yes, I realize that most first-time AMV's will suck big time, but I just don't want mine to suck too much. Thanks for all the advice - and keep them coming! Us noobies need to know this!

That is not necessarily true, because I've seen many a first AMV that were great. + If you keep thinking like that your first AMV will suck big time.

Org Profile · Post by **808-buma** » Sun May 08, 2005 12:25 am

IcyCloud wrote:A few of the mistakes I've seen in first videos :
- Subtitles. Using downloaded footage in itself is a no-no, but even moreso if you leave the subtitles in. That's just lazy.
- DivX logo (or fansub group/GameSpot logos). If you follow the compression guide, you should be DivX logo-free. As in the above case, if you're using downloaded footage and it's got a logo, crop it out or use LogoAway.
- Lip flap. Unless you're lip-syncing, having mouths moving is distracting from your video.
- Rough or no deinterlacing/IVTC. Some scripts work better than others, so it's important to experiment to find which gives you the best results.
- Off timing. Pay careful attention to the beats and be consistent.

Those are the most prevalent ones I've come across, anyhow.

sorry, missed this in the above reply -
Two questions on the above:

1. I know what you mean about 'random lip flapping' but I'm supposing that if it isn't centered on the screen (the focal point of the scene occuring), would it be passible? For example, one shot I'm using (from GitS), is a closeup of Motoko's chest as she is gearing up, but at the top of the screen, you can see the bottom of her face and she is talking to someone. The main view of the screen is her gearing up, so would that be okay, in general (as I know unless you've seen GitS a hundred times or actually used the scene, you may not be familiar with it)?

2. I'm somewhat confused by the guides about interlaced vids. Currently, I'm editing directly with the VOB files that are, as I understand it, progressive (and interlaced, right?). So, if my final output from all these VOB files is still a dvd compliant VOB file, I can skip the de-interlacing, right? Or am I missing something?

Thanks again

AquaSky · Post by **AquaSky** » Sun May 08, 2005 2:37 am

1.) Lip flap is distracting no matter where on the screen it is occuring. Fortunately, most instances can be covered by masking (unless it's a high-motion scene or the like).

2.) VOBs can be either interlaced/telecined or fully progressive, but not both. Very few anime DVDs are encoded progressively, and to my knowledge, GitS is not one of them. Therefore, you must inverse telecine (or deinterlace, whichever method you choose). I think you may be a bit confused about encoding; your end video will have an .avi extension (or .mpg, .wmv, etc.), not VOB. In short, can't skip the deinterlacing, but it's not terribly difficult to do - just use the guides and you'll be fine.

FoxJones · Post by **FoxJones** » Sun May 08, 2005 2:58 am

IcyCloud wrote: - Lip flap. Unless you're lip-syncing, having mouths moving is distracting from your video.

I still see this as a viewer's problem, not a technical screw up. It's a symptom from the disease called over-using-lip-sync-in-every-other-darn-AMV

Though, this differs depending of the AMV's concept. There are some situations where lip flapping will bother, but then again there are times when it does not bother at all and whining about it seems really odd to me. Though several of the latter cases are fully instrumental AMVs. I for one thing usually want SOMETHING to happen in the video. If the lip flapping supports the music it's more acceptable than using static person-just-sits-there-with-his/her-jaw-open just that there wouldn't be any lip flap. Better example for this would be.. There's a scene in a drama AMV where two people are having a intense conversation.. like arguing over something. Now.. they are showing great emotion and this supports the song's pacing and the over feeling of the musical piece or follows up the story the artist wanted to tell in his/her AMV. If there's singing now and it isn't lip synced.. if this is called annoying lip flapping I really just have to rise an eyebrow for this.. o.ô
Let's take the same scene and lip sync it. Now the scenes are enslaved by the lyrics and might give whole different meaning to the AMV itself. Well.. "fck that, now there's no lip flapping" -> o(-_-#)
(just rambling of a story-telling asshole artist you guys should ignore..)

Long message short: Point is that lip sync/lip flap are NOT a good thing/problem as such. It's how they are imbedded in the AMV.

godix · Post by **godix** » Sun May 08, 2005 3:09 am

I basically agree with FoxJones. If you have a far off shot with stuff happening in the background, a crowd shot, or some other clip where the focus isn't on the lips then lip flap is no big deal, hell there's a decent chance no one even notices. OTOH if you have a closeup of one characters face and they're flapping their gums for no reason then it's a problem. So basically it all depends on the scene and how noticable the lip flap is.