OMG! Its Finally here! I give thee... Ayumix 2 - Release!

[dj_ultima_the_great]

Let's see... how should I put this... for me, this project had a lot of downfalls wrapped in a cocoon of hype of sparkly effects. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it, because I did. So, please don't take these comments too personally, cuz they're gonna be harsh. (And for the record, I had no idea who edited what track until I watched the credits, so don't think I'm nitpicking anyone based on a bias.)

Intro - neat concept. Would have been even neater if it wasn't running at eleventy billion miles per hour. And for the love of all that is AMV, check your spelling in the intros/outros of any project! This is ridiculous. Like I said, had the intro been running a bit slower, I'd have loved it, but it whips by way too quickly to catch many details - with the exception of bad spelling, of course. : |

Track A - decent, solid editing. Good beat sync, although the scenes felt completely random. It seemed like the characters in the foreground were the focus and the background was meant to be nothing but a blur of motion behind them.

Track B - nice. I think there was glow added, and it was too much at times, but I enjoyed the segment anyway. It reminded me stylistically of something from the first project.

Track C - I enjoyed it until the Kingdom Hearts II stuff kicked in. Don't get me wrong - I love KH. It's just that it was the same scene for that entire part of the segment. No variety. I still liked the editing, but it wasn't visually interesting anymore.

Track D - questionable lipsync, but an overall good segment. Needed some sharpening or something, because many of the shots were blurry.

Track E - definitely reminded me more of something from the first project, which is a compliment, because that means it has great beat sync. Not a huge fan of the moving box effect, but I also expected to see it eventually. Any project with a lot of effects seems to drift to the "moving box"...

Track F - either the anime choice sucked, or the scene choices sucked. One of the two. I mean, this music is really, really bright and upbeat, and I'm seeing crying, fighting, and blood onscreen??? Give me a break.

Track G - no complaints about this track. I really enjoyed it. Good choice of anime, great editing, and one of the few segments that actually looks good at this resolution. Cliché scene choices, but I can live with that for how nicely everything else is done.

Track H - great sync, both with beats and internal. I did feel like it needed to focus on either the people OR the mechas, though. In such a short track, more than one or two elements make the whole thing feel random.

Track I - otherwise known as, "how many face shots can we put in a segment?" There's very little actually happening in this part, thought it's pretty to look at, I guess. Could have done without the moving picture thing near the end... it's overdone at this point, to be honest. Shiny colors, though.

Track J - transformation sequence, opening shot, transformation sequence, opening shot, etc, etc, etc. I'm so sick of CCS videos being nothing but Sakura's summonings and overused opening credits shots. The editing was good, overall, but without more original footage from the anime (and it HAS other stuff; don't try to tell me it doesn't) it just wasn't interesting to watch.

Track K - had a MAD-ish feel to it, which I thought was fun. Nothing about this segment that really stuck out besides that; regardless, I really liked it.

Track L - I'm wondering why this segment was so much longer than the others when there was a perfectly logical point it could have been split at. Anywho, it was a good segment. Nice beat sync, pretty sweet video quality (particularly compared to many of the other segments in the project). Again, overused scenes, but in a MEP, it doesn't really surprise me.

Track M - a bit rough around the edges (literally "rough"; I'm talking about the masking here), but I believe that this is by far the best segment in the project. It has awesome beat sync without seeming overdone, and it flowed very well. My favorite, personally (and this is from the perspective of someone who doesn't care for Kanon, mind you).

Credits - no real complaints about them; they're serviceable and clean. Although I'm wondering why Sakura's wand seems to have a mind of its own and keeps floating around out of her hand. Okay, okay, so I'm probably being harsh. The animation had to have been hard to do, but if you're going to take the time to do it at all, then you should take the time to keep up with the details.

Overall - even in .mp4, most of the segments could have had better video quality. I blame this mostly on unnecessary upscaling. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should, after all. Also, I believe that part of the reason that people have been going so gaga over this project is because it has barely had any competition! This, unfortunately, is the year of (mostly) average MEPs, it seems, and I think that this one rises above partly for being good, and partly just because we haven't seen anything above the norm to challenge it lately.

Good job to everyone involved as a whole. Of course, I like the first project better, but this one was different from that and still fun to watch.


- Jen

[Infinity Squared]

Overall - even in .mp4, most of the segments could have had better video quality. I blame this mostly on unnecessary upscaling. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should, after all. Also, I believe that part of the reason that people have been going so gaga over this project is because it has barely had any competition! This, unfortunately, is the year of (mostly) average MEPs, it seems, and I think that this one rises above partly for being good, and partly just because we haven't seen anything above the norm to challenge it lately.

Good job to everyone involved as a whole. Of course, I like the first project better, but this one was different from that and still fun to watch.

I agree with this.

[Bakadeshi]

Overall - even in .mp4, most of the segments could have had better video quality. I blame this mostly on unnecessary upscaling. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should, after all.

I did this to get best visual quality out of the DVD sourced and HD raw footage. Vertical resolution 480p was left untouched, and the 720 upscaled to 848 for 16:9 sources, same as would normally happen when you watch the DVD on your PC or any HD capable TV.

This gives us the crispest looking footage when viewed on a HD LCD Monitor, which is why I did it this way. The smaller 704x396 version file looks softer at fullscreen on the same monitor.

The segments that suffered the most from this were the 4:3 sources that had to be upscaled to 16:9 to fit in with the widescreen format. This is one of the reasons I have the 4:3 format available, but I am attempting to see if I can get these sources looking better by filtering the segments seperately before joining them for the Higher definition MKV with chapters that I will make available soon, if it works out.


As for the spellings, aside from Mamo!'s name, which I changed at the last minute, I blame those who watched the beta and didn't tell me their names where wrong before release

[Neverend]

Most of the mep was pure eye candy, but some parts i dident get into!

But i liked it allot!

Thumbs deshi, for the outro and intro

[CodeZTM]

Nice!

The Cardcaptor Sakura segment was my favorite, and it was goregously done, compliments to the chef.

The sailor moon/pretear/angelic layer was a tad too long for my taste, and that would be my only gripe.

But...

5.00/5.00 - Gorgeous

[Bakadeshi]

I'm wondering why Sakura's wand seems to have a mind of its own and keeps floating around out of her hand.

Oh but it does. Its the wonderwand Pro, fully automated. Cost her quite a penny.


Seriously tho, I didn;t notice that till after I gave it to nio, and I wanted to get it released for thanksgiving. Its not realy that hard to fix per say, but would've required a much more annoyingly long rendering time to rerender the entire thing. (or at least a good portion of it)

[jade_eyed_angel]

I'm wondering why Sakura's wand seems to have a mind of its own and keeps floating around out of her hand.

Oh but it does. Its the wonderwand Pro, fully automated. Cost her quite a penny.


Seriously tho, I didn;t notice that till after I gave it to nio, and I wanted to get it released for thanksgiving. Its not realy that hard to fix per say, but would've required a much more annoyingly long rendering time to rerender the entire thing. (or at least a good portion of it)

O;
screw that
wonderwand pros ftw
^_^

[Kisanzi]

I'm kinda late on this one eh?

I kinda agree with what JCD said about the music selections not having enough variety to sync to besides the synth slides and bassline, but it was still fun to experiment with.

But good stuff. I agree the project has its ups and downs, but yeah, VNS FTW. Fun stuff overall.

[CrackTheSky]

*Sigh*

Alright. First of all, I never watched Ayumix 1, so I went into this without any expectations, at least none pertaining to the first project. So, keep that in mind.

When I saw it at AWA, I thought it was pretty cool. Lots of colors on the big screen, big crowd, the feeling was just better at the con, and ultimately I think that's what this video is meant to be. It's a crowd-pleaser, no doubt about it, and it definitely works better in that setting.

Ignoring that, though, now that I have it on my computer and can look at it a bit closer, I honestly just don't like the majority of it. There are a few tracks that I enjoy (jasper's, Unlimited's, Mamo's, Reigna/aerialesque's, and kisanzi's), and even some of those are hard to sit through at times. The rest were just not fitting at all. I'm not going to mention names, but godix kind of summed up a lot of what I was thinking while watching it - low-energy, not much flow (I'm not even talking between tracks, individually most of these segments just don't keep up with the music)...more or less, the majority of the video simply bored me.

It probably doesn't help that I can't stand the music (I'm a fan of electronica, but Ayumi Hamasaki's voice is just terrible in my opinion), but even so...I dunno, I just wasn't feeling this. I almost feel like a lot of the project was just rotos and not much else, and honestly, even though a lot of effort was spent on this, that doesn't cut it as far as I'm concerned. I'd have liked to see more creativity.

Overall, I'd call this project very underwhelming, and a disappointment. Sorry guys, not my cup of tea :/

2.5/5

[x_rex30]

WOW! Most of the op givers were the creators. I'm ashamed. Not to say anything bad about the video itself. May check it out later.