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Information

• Member: kiarrens
• Studio: Tech Girl Productions
• Title: Alchemist's Trade
• Premiered: 2004-04-25
• Categories:
  • Action
  • Drama
  • Serious
• Song:
  • Linkin Park Somewhere I Belong
• Anime:
  • Fullmetal Alchemist (TV)
• Comments: 11/10/2009
  I am simply astounded by the fact that people still comment on this video. I created it 5 years ago with the only footage available to me (namely, fansubs) and compared to the work I do now, I consider it to be rather sub-par. If people continue to leave comments on it maybe I'll consider re-making it with DVD footage... but as of now I have no plans to do so. We'll see.....
  
  
  
  
  Disclaimer: I would like to start by saying that I made a vow when I began making AMVs NEVER to make a Linkin Park video, regardless of how much I enjoy their music. However, I was searching for an appropiate song for Fullmetal Alchemist and happened across "Somewhere I Belong" in my audio files... and I knew that the vow must be broken. The song fits Edward-kun perfectly. This being said, I realized that I'd have to make the video as good as it possibly could be to counter-act the overuse of LP, hence I've spent well over a hundred hours on this video.
  
  The first incarnation of the video I finished in about 10 hours, then tried to export. It wouldn't work. I discovered that because half of the fansubs I was using to edit were XviD encodes, the B-frame decoder lag was at work, and none of the clips I had used from episodes 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, or 16 would export. I gave up on the video as a lost cause for about a week, then decided that it was just too good to give up on and began re-encoding all the XviD episodes as DivX. I realized that this would result in quality loss but decided that it was worth the risk.
  (All subtitles were cropped out using the crop line of AVSscript.)
  After a good 10 hours of encoding, I was ready to replace all the clips I had previously used with the nex DivX ones. This took another 5 or 6 hours. Then began the process of refining and re-drafting.
  I also found that the version of the song I was previously using was awful quality, so after searching our entire campus for someone with the CD (unsuccessfully) I drove to Newbury Comics and picked up a copy. I'm chalking up the 16$ as a reasonable expense. ^^
  Many, MANY thanks are in order to DOKool, who watched versions 1-5 of this video and pushed me to make it better each time. He also helped me immeasurably with the "scratched" section of the song, which I found that I just couldn't read.
  I also nearly had a mental breakdown when I realized that my FPS settings in premiere were incorrect, and that I was editing in a different fps than the video files I was using.
  Finally, after countless hours, two moments of near insanity, and 5 drafts, I feel that this video is ready to be put up for download. I hope that you enjoy it, please leave an opinion and let me know if you do - or don't! ^^
  
  The version up for DL here is an MPEG-1, but I have a better quality XviD encode on my computer. If you'd like that version feel free to IM me at kiarrens and I'll set up a file transfer. I chose to use the mpg version simply because I haven't heard of anyone having problems opening them, and some computers just can't handle XviD. My own included.
  
  (Tech specs: All video footage taken from the Keep_ANBU fansubs of Fullmetal Alchemist, episodes 1-23. Opening and ending bumpers created on Adobe photoshop. Video programs used: Adobe Premiere 6.5, Virtual Dub AVS, TMPGenc.)