AMVs = Fun+Craziness+epic time consumer!

OK, first AnimeNEXT-themed post (Already!? Yeah, I know... >_<) As do just about all anime conventions, AnimeNEXT has an AMV (anime music video) contest (as well as a non-competition screening). So naturally I MUST submit something to the contest! I’m still on the high of doing so well on my movie trailer (see below post) – even if only one person voted (Thanx Remy since I’m sure it was you! LOVES!) and one person commented. ANYWAY, the high off of that, plus still feeling pretty good about my Helsing AMV “Bloodsucker Alucard” that I edited in time for last year’s Halloween (I think…). I also felt like I did well for my two Game Destroyers (webcomic, see below post) promotional videos: the teaser, and the music video. I’m on an editing high right now and I think I could pull off a really kick ass winning video. But what to do!?
Well, Mina had previously expressed wanting to learn how to make an AMV (or something of the sort), plus she can actually get footage – as opposed to my method of downloading a crapload of AMVs off of AnimeMusicVideos.org, slicing the AMVs apart, and then re-assembling them as my own work… ANYWAY, Mina can get the footage, and the music, and she wanted to learn how to make an AMV, and she introduced me to AnimeNEXT in the first place, AND SOOOOO I decided to have her help. We’re gonna collaborate on an AMV to submit. If Remy or Celia want to join in on the efforts they can, but it’s mostly us two girls (me and Mina).
I’m super excited about this effort – maybe obsessively so *blush*
It’s a good thing we work together, because any chance I get I harass her about something new about this AMV that doesn’t even need to be STARTED until April… First, it was wondering on the musical choice. We decided on upbeat because it’s more fun that way, and it would appeal to the male viewership a lot easier. Next, Mina commented that she loved “Bloodsucker Alucard”, and that it was a shame I couldn’t submit it to the contest because of the watermark logos and opening credits I have in the video (stupid contest rules!). She said she loved that the video not only had a song that fit really well with the feel of the anime, but that it was a song she was unfamiliar with. She informed me that one of the main reasons she watches AMVs is to get introduced to new songs. Based off of that, and both of our love of the song I used in the end credits of “Bloodsucker Alucard”, we decided on staying with the vampire theme and use the song “Deception” by the Cruxshadows. We then talked about WHICH vampires to use and decided on D from Vampire Hunter D. It doesn’t hurt that Mina has both of the Vampire Hunter D movies.
OK, so we have a song and an anime to use, we’re on a great start. Now I needed to research my competition. I went back to AMV.org and downloaded all of the videos that claimed to have submitted to the 2009 AnimeNEXT AMV screenings. There were 27 hits, and only 5 I couldn’t download for one reason or another. Most weren’t uploaded as .wmvs, and so I had to convert them. Thank you NCH Prism Converter (see below post)! Problem being, that apparently what I had downloaded was a free trial, so now I had to decide on whether or not to buy the program. Eh, it was on sale (until the 15th – that’s today, folks) for like $30, and I already used it an insane amount of times, so *shrug* why not. Purchased! Wait! I get an additional 10% off if I purchased something else within the next 4 hours!? Well, might as well get the full version of the FlashLynx download program (see below post). That was only $14 with the added discount. Sweet. Purchased! Then I debated to do the hat trick and just purchase the Debut Video Capture software (see below post), but I decided to wait until I actually put my latest paycheck into the bank…
AAAAANYWAY (I segway a lot, don’t I?), I downloaded and converted all of those AMVs, and then went through AnimeNEXT’s list of competitors/winners. I have a winner and/or runner up for every category at least. That’s when I started getting nervous. Most of them were REALLY good. At least two of the emotional ones made me tear up. Thank god Mina and I decided to NOT do sentimental >_< $800 on a copy of Adobe Premiere, so I’m stuck editing with friggen Windows Movie Maker! Yeah, I can do some mean edits with that crappy program, so just imagine how good I'd be with a professional one, but still… It will be tough to be any sort of competition with friggen WMM! Worst part about the program is that you can only move 7 frames at a time! I can’t cut something down frame-by-frame, and that hurts a lot of stuff – especially dubbing. It’s also hard in WMM to re-edit the timing of the video (like I MAJORLY had to do for “Bloodsucker Alucard”). It’s definitely gonna be a hard-ass battle to get up to par with these videos! Strange thing though, the ones I thought were AMAZING didn’t even place in the competitions, and most of the winners I was like “eh” when I watched… so who knows how the audience is gonna feel that day. *shrug* Great, 8 months of stressing about this damn AMV! >_<>

Movie Trailer Epicness!

OK... So, I wanted to put some videos that I had on my computer onto my cell phone. Unfortunately, simply converting them into .mov files still kept them too large of a file. Therefore I went online in search of a converter. I found the NCH Prism Video Converter. (Great program, but apparently the free download is only a trial T_T) Anyway, the converter download came with the option of downloading free versions of other video programs... such as:
Debut Video Capture Software
FlashLynx Online Video Downloader
Pixillion Image Converter Software
PhotoPad Image Editor
Photostage Slideshow Software
OK, well, now that I have these new toys, I have to play with them ^_^
Ever since I discovered the movie trailer for "9" last month (see earlier posts), I had thought "God, this and Advent Children would work AWESOMELY together!" Well, I went on good old YouTube and searched... but I'm epiclly horrible at searching for stuff - research papers in college were HORRIBLE! - and so, I didn't turn up anything. Well, with my new desire to play with my new programs I instantly knew what to do. I wanted to re-edit the "9" movie trailer using footage from the Final Fantasy VII movie "Advent Children".
I started off by using FlashLynx to download the official trailer off of YouTube. I then used Debut's computer screen capture to gather up Advent Children footage. Popped in my DVD and hit record... and soon after I realized the the free version of Debut only allows about 30 seconds of capturing! Crap... most of the fight scenes I wanted to capture were about 3 minutes at least... Worst part was that Debut beeps when it starts recording, but it doesn't beep when it stops recording; it beeps when it is done processing the capture. So it records for about 30 seconds, but you don't hear the second beep until about 40 or 50 seconds after you start recording. So I had to then re-watch everything I captured and rewind the movie so that the stop and start overlapped. That way I could re-edit the entire fight scenes together if I wanted. Anyway, this was a rediculously slow process that left me counting out seconds so that I didn't need to rewind and re-watch as much. I also had difficulties with Debut crashing on me about a 1/2 dozen times >_<
The next day (again, starting at about 5pm because of work...) I started working on the edit and nearly cried when I realized that the frame-rate I captured everything in wasn't compatible with Window's Movie Maker. Thankfully, Good Old NCH Prism could not only convert file types, but also frame-rates! YAY! FYI - frame rate is how many single frames make up a second of film. Normal frame-rate for TV is 30 frames per second (FPS), or - more accurately - 29.97FPS. Film is 25FPS I believe (hadn't had to think of anything besides TV Frame-rate for so long I can't recall!) *clears throat* Um... AAAANYWAY... so I converted the frame-rates and was good to go for the edit. Next problem, however, was when I stupiditly decided to re-organize all of my files by creating a folder to store all of the screen captures. Well, if I were using a professional editing system I could just relink everything and we'd be set. But, nope, not with WMM. I told it where to find the files after I switched them, and they still didn't function properly. And so I had to start all over! TT_TT Thankfully, I didn't do too much, but what I had was timed perfectly, so it was still annoying.
What I ended up doing was literally cutting out any "9" movie footage. I left the audio (obviously) and the on-screen graphics from the trailer. I just replaced the "9" footage with "Advent Children" footage. It was a long and slow process (finished at about 1am), but I am very happy with the end result. I watched it at least a dozen times before heading in to work at 11am the next day (October 8th). I then talked about it every time I wasn't with a customer. I was sort of going through minor withdrawals too; the entire time I was at work I just wanted to be home so I could watch the finished product again! I had posted the 2-minute video in about four different places online and I was antsy to see if anyone responded. Would people like it? I was therefore a little irritated when, for the 2nd day in a row, I had to stay almost an extra 20 minutes to help cover the next shift! Anyway, I rushed home to see if anyone commented on my videos... nothing... but I watched it a few dozen more times myself. (BTW, STILL no one has written a comment about whether or not they liked the end product T_T).
I shamelessly sent my video EVERYWHERE. I posted on Facebook for people to check it out. I sent IMs to a few friends asking them to watch the video. I actually sent it to another friend via Facebook for her to watch. I ambushed my sister to have her watch (she gave me a verbal "dude, that rocks"), and harassed her into showing Peter the video (who also gave a verbal thumbs up).
After watching the video about 30 times on YouTube, I finally noticed that one of the "related videos" was another "9" trailer using Advent Children! And it was posted in May! How did I miss this when I first searched!? Oh yea, I suck at searching... >_< So, now I was wondering how good my video was in comparison. I started to go insane comparing the two. I asked my sister for her opinion. I asked the two friends I was harassing on AIM to give their opinions. And I updated my status on Facebook asking the community for THEIR opinions... Quick side note: Parts of Kirakirakingyo's video that I really loved: Cloud floating in empty space, Kadaj diving after Jenova, and Vincent jumping from the beast. Also loved Cloud's dub for "something terrible". I then debated if I should go back and re-edit mine to use these parts of Kirakira's, but I think I'm gonna leave mine be. Anyway, end of side note.
So after watching Kirakira's I noticed someone ELSE had posted that they had made a trailer as well... Exia0929 seemed to have remixed the trailer audio as well... I really liked about 46 seconds in - the clip where Cloud dislodges his one sword by using a second one as sort of a parallel-bar. I think that worked beautifully and I again wondered if I should re-edit my video to put that clip in... And then I noticed ANOTHER TRAILER! How bad do I suck at searching!? Anyway, THIS one was EPIC! If you didn't click the link yet, well, thank you for still reading... but be sure to check it out! AngelDemon101 just used the trailer song "Welcome Home" by Coheed and Cambria, remixed the song to cut out all the lyrics (it was well done), and just did an epic job at showcasing the different characters in the FFVII movies Advent Children and Crisis Core.
Well, after searching YouTube for a short time I started to wonder about the quality of my video. It isn't as grand as AngelDemon's, but it was proclaimed better than Kirakira's by everyone whom I asked. I guess I'm still proud of my work. I like the subtleness that is the Advent Children clips that correspond to the 9 footage. Perhaps I'll find a way to make a video in which both trailers are side-by-side... we'll see if I can figure out how to do that. In the mean time, I went back to what I originally set out to do - convert videos to carry with me on my phone. And guess what video made the cut ^_^ The audio sucks on my cell, but now I can show just about everyone I meet! ^_^

SOOOOOO Obsessed over this! Well... you might as well be obsessed too. Without further ado... my Advent Children "9" trailer! COMMENT!