main menu

• Members Main Page
• Search for AMVs
• Forum
• How-To Guides
• Site FAQ
• About us
• Login

Information

• Member: dj_ultima_the_great
• Title: Let the World Crash
• Premiered: 2007-05-10
• Categories:
  • Drama
  • Romance
• Song:
  • Skillet A Little More
• Anime:
  • SaiKano (She, The Ultimate Weapon)
• Participation:
  • Anime Central 2007, Anime Central 2007 AMV Contest (2007-05-11)
• Comments: My fourteenth music video. My first full (and serious) video using anime (not videogames).
  
  For info about the sources, go to section one!
  For info about the video, go to section two!
  For info about the technical points, go to section three!
  If you don't really give a damn about any of that, download the video!
  
  Section 1 - Sources
  When I first watched the Saikano anime, I recognized it for what it was - an overly dramatic series with a ton of angst that was designed to make you cry each and every episode. Well, as overplayed as it was, it worked. I cried. Each and every episode. However, most video ideas I had for it fell by the wayside because they weren't very concrete. When I read the manga about two years later, that all changed. Yes, it was angsty. Yes, it too was overplayed. But there was something about it that was so much more compelling for me than the anime had been, and I drew off of that for many AMV ideas. This was one such idea.
  
  The song was one of those that I skipped over as I listened to the album. It didn't catch my interest until I started song hunting for a Saikano video - and then... this one hit me like a ton of bricks. The song was absolutely perfect for Saikano. There wasn't a single lyric that couldn't be matched with a clip - and not just half-assed matching, either... scenes that I could fully justify using.The idea swam around in my head unlike any idea had before, and over several months of collecting sources, software, and hardware to do the video, I had solidified a storyboard in my head more clearly than I had with any other project. I was excited, and so I dubbed this, "THE Video."
  
  Section 2 - The Video
  As previously mentioned, I started calling this "THE Video" - and with good reason. It was the video that finally made me decide to drop Windows Movie Maker. Granted, I made The Chosen Two in Magix before this one, but I had the idea for this project before that one. Secondly, I bought the Saikano anime boxset as well as the Skillet album just to do this. I tend to work with sources I already own, so that was a big leap for me. Thirdly, I read READFAG quite a bit and learned how to rip DVDs for the sake of THE Video.
  
  Conceptually, it more or less follows the story of the anime. A "love prevails over all" kind of thing, if you will. However, I wanted to show that Shuji and Chise had happy moments, too, which I think are left out of Saikano videos all too often. If it were straight angst, one of the two would have gone suicidal throughout the series. So, it's important for me to show how they had love and happiness to cling to, even as the world was crashing down around them.
  
  The actual editing was pretty easy. It was basic cuts and fades, which I had planned all along, so it's not a thing of laziness on my part. It just flowed better that way. I added a few overlays here and there, but nothing too major. Magix's overlays aren't very cooperative, so a lot of them come out too bright. The effects in this video are really the kind that you'd see in most standard effect-using videos. That's not my area of expertise, so I stay simple with it.
  
  Section 3 - Technical Points
  Yergh. Not sure I even want to go into this. I'm sure that there are a dozen things wrong with the video quality, but it looks correct to my eyes, so I'm not complaining. The DVDs were accidentally purchased bootlegs, so they were burned all funky to the discs. Interlacing didn't come out per se, but rather was smoothed out with many a filter. In fact, it probably looks oversmoothed to most people, but that's better than what it was without the filters. There was still ghosting left after the semi-successful interlacing removal, but I can't do much for that. By the time I got extra advice on how I might be able to save the video quality, I was already finished editing and preparing my entry for ACen.
  
  Long story short, I've putzed around enough with the video quality on this video, and unless I get proper DVDs, I'm not messing with it anymore. It's just not worth it without correct source footage to work from.
  
  Particular Points:
  - there is still a good deal of lip flap. Sorry. When I tried to mask it out, it always looked awkward, or I couldn't align it properly. I decided to leave the video as is, because I'd rather have a video where Shuji and Chise won't shut up than a video where they never talk, but their mouths are twitching strangely. Besides, you can't have a relationship without speaking.
  - overlays were kinda bright sometimes. I tried to tone them down, but Magix is weird like that.
  - you might see a tiny hop in the video every once in a while (think, once a minute), because I didn't realize that Magix would have problems with the Lagarith codec that my clips were encoded in. I didn't figure out what the problem was until I had already figured out ways to somewhat smoothly jump over the glitchy parts that appeared in the clips occasionally (and after I had already rendered the final video). So, if you see a split second hop in the motion, that's probably me cutting out a glitch and trying to blend the two halves of the scene.
  
  Encode is XviD, because the lossless copy didn't look all that hot and I didn't think learning h.264 for this video was worth it. I'll do it for the next one, when the source itself looks better and merits it.
  
  Time spent: 100 hours (ripping, cleaning), 50 hours (editing)
  Sources/Programs Used:
  Saikano: Perfect Collection (bootlegs... oops... v_v )
  DVD Decrypter
  DGIndex
  Skillet - Collide
  CDex
  Magix Movie Edit Pro 10
  Avisynth
  Virtual Dub Mod
  
  ______________________________________________________
  
  Thanks to IRC folks for offering tech advice, and GQ and sto for offering that and other advice. Sorry, I didn't follow as much of it as I probably should have. ~_~;;
  
  I sent this video to Anime Central 2007 in the Romance category. It didn't win (congrats aerialesque!), but I was overjoyed to see them just playing it. I was so worried it wouldn't be on the roster. Looking forward to submitting next year, hopefully with something a bit stronger in the technical department.
  
  I hope you can enjoy this. It's not what I wanted it to be, but it's a step in the right direction. I think. >_>
  
  As always, Farewell, Good Luck, and Happy AMV-ing!
  
  
  - Jen