One hell of an action-packed KH2 tribute

sayde · Post by **sayde** » Thu May 18, 2006 2:29 am

Don't worry, ALL of the footage is mine. In other words, no downloaded trailers or fmvs were used in the making of this. I spent a lot of time working on this one, so hopefully you'll give it a chance. It's action and lyrical sync should prove to be on-point, and I THINK the way I incorporated the gameplay should prove to be another original aspect about this amv. Now I know the very fact that I mentioned the term "gameplay" is a turn off to many, but honestly, give it a chance. I would'nt have used gameplay if I didn't think it could work. (Read my amv's description to learn more about this.)

I didn't whore fmv footage, nor did whore the final fantasy characters. I used a tiny, tiny bit of KH1's "another side, another story" cut scene stictly for lyrical sync purposes, but other than that it's all KH2 and it's all mine. Enjoy. And feedback as always, would be nice.

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members ... p?v=117227

dj_ultima_the_great · Post by **dj_ultima_the_great** » Thu May 18, 2006 9:55 am

*sigh* I fear that this thread won't get many views because it's a KH2 video, but since I know you're a good editor, hopefully I can help draw some attention to it.

Let's see...technical stuff first. Video quality was decent - better than I figured captured footage would be (since I know that's the only way to get the ingame scenes). Of course, the actual cutscenes don't count here, so I'll have to tell you that those looked good, too. You're right about the gameplay footage, though. It did work (but don't think I didn't see that reaction command triangle or the lock on circle

). My trouble with it was that it made the video change aspect ratios constantly. Believe me, I was totally grateful that you cropped out the life bar and gauges, but it also meant that I had to watch black bars of varying sizes going around your scenes. It's kind of distracting. My suggestion would have been to take the scene with the smallest resolution and match all of your others to that. Yes, yes. I realize that you might not like cropping out part of the picture (I don't much like that either), but it really does give the video a uniform look. Audio sounded fine, although the video ran on a little long for an action piece (and I didn't much like the music, but that doesn't count).

As for the actual editing, you did really well here. Your lyrical sync was right on, if a bit too literal at times. Beat sync was a little inconsistent, but good. I did notice some internal sync, which is always a plus. Like I mentioned before, the gameplay stuff actually worked here. Without a distracting life bar, it looked a lot like the normal ingame scenes themselves. Of course, I partially attribute this to the fact that KH2 is very flashy and cinematic with its battles. Again, the video ran on a tad longer than I would have liked. As a general rule of thumb, action videos exceeding more than four minutes tend to lose the interest of the audience. Sure enough, three quarters of the way through the video, I found myself checking the timer to see how much was left.

Frankly, the one thing I'm in awe over is how long it must have taken you to capture all of this. I mean, you had to play the game at least twice through. There's - at minimum - forty hours for two runs. Add in the time it must have taken you to get some of the extra battle sequence stuff captured, and I'd say that that's a pretty impressive effort.

The originality of this AMV (meaning, someone who actually took the time to get their footage and make a good product) makes it a keeper for me. That makes two videos of yours on my hard drive, if you'd like to keep count. ^_~

Great work!

- Jen

PS: hey, I just read your video description (I hadn't before), and I realized that I mentioned some of the things you already addressed in there. Since I'm too lazy to go back and edit all that, though... yeah. >_>

sayde · Post by **sayde** » Thu May 18, 2006 11:23 am

Thanks a lot for you honest opinion Jen! I knew it would'nt be the next O'Fortuna (although in my defense, this particular song didn't allow for editting like that *lol*), but it's nice to know the flaws you pointed out more or less matched what I was already aware of.

It's kind of wierd though. I've gotten criticism for making long action amv's before, but this particular amv really didn't start out as such during the beginnings of the project. It really only did after I tried to take the literal approach to some of the lyrics. *whoops*

sayde · Post by **sayde** » Thu May 18, 2006 3:15 pm

I hate to double post like this, but I felt it was worth mentioning that I made a 2nd version of the amv in which I stretched/cropped every clip to match the same aspect ratio (Thus correcting this amv's biggest flaw to the best of ability). It can be downloaded here:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=R57ES2BQ

(Don't worry, although noticible, the aspect ratio didn't make a DRASTIC change.)

Shinodude · Post by **Shinodude** » Thu May 18, 2006 7:06 pm

wow a kh2 amv that doesnt suck but wish the quality was better

sayde · Post by **sayde** » Thu May 18, 2006 7:57 pm

^^thanks for that Shinodude. Sorry for the quality (especially on some of the gameplay clips), but lets' just say that for me to make a perfect quality version of this amv, I'd need a lot more hard drive disk space to work with. lol =P

Minion · Post by **Minion** » Thu May 18, 2006 10:35 pm

dj_ultima_the_great wrote: I know you're a good editor

without that, i wouldn't have downloaded this.
VERY good work. 5 starz, yo

sayde · Post by **sayde** » Fri May 19, 2006 11:59 am

heh...sweet^^

thanks.

devilmaykickass · Post by **devilmaykickass** » Sat May 20, 2006 4:44 pm

I enjoyed that. Cropping/resizing took a toll on the footage at points, but it's understandable.

Stolen Soul · Post by **Stolen Soul** » Sun May 21, 2006 8:12 pm

rather good if i do say so myself (and i do

)
out of 10, i would give it an 8, the other 2 points were for, of course, qulaity reasons. other than that, very nice, it did kh2 justice. ^^