Awaiting specified feedback on AMV - 1:1 or 1:2

[EMrain]

Heyo it's Retro,

I recently made my first official AMV, one featuring the anime series known as "Megaman NT Warrior".

*Quality is WIP if not permissible in specified AMV contest the June 3rd post edit below*

It's called 'Net Boost' because of the common practice of Net Battles as part of the anime, the boost part is from Yungtown's quick track called "Raptor Boost" which he fortunately gave me permission to use.

Link to AMV here: https://youtu.be/EVQh-1fYUIQ

I await opinions!

EDIT 6/3: I want to know if the Animethon AMV Contest http://www.animethon.org/index.php?231-amv-contest will accept the visual quality of AMV linked above *for best results, switch resolution setting to 720p* I ask this because I don't want to risk getting DQ'd due to slight blurriness, the original airing of MegaMan NT Warrior was in March of 2002, so its older than more recent Anime series' out there. Please give me an answer to this, please? Thanks in advance!

EDIT 6/12: I already found my answer, submitted it to the contest, I need to delete this post now, but don't see a delete button anymore. Can someone help me with that?

[Dragonrider1227]

It's hard for me to give an opinion since I'm not the best at reviewing and I'm not a big fan of rap music but I personally think your video needs to flow with the song better. Mind you, I understand this could be difficult though seeing as how the song goes really fast. I'm sorry, I want to help you out but I really am terrible at this

as for it's quality, it's hard to tell how good it is on youtube seeing how even at 720p Youtube has the tendancy to destroy video quality. You might want to try a file sharing site and let us download the file itself. Yeah, I had to find this out the hard way myself ^^; Where did you get your source material?

[Tarage]

There are two things I can suggest you work on: Timing and lip-sync, and flow.

You seem to have at least a base understanding of when to do cuts. That's great! You'd be surprised at how few editors understand that. However, there is more to editing than just hitting the beats. There are other not so visible beats you should be trying to hit as well, and I'll give you an example. At about the 10 second mark, there's a "Pow" in the lyrics. You were close, but you didn't quite get it to sync up with the character getting hit. Now, I'm not sure which would be better, having the punch be on the "Pow", or having the transition. Either way, as it is now, it looks a bit too late, so I'm not sure. It's an art, not a science, and it's gonna take a few tries to get right.

Lip-syncing is very hard. You have to spend a lot of time making sure the mouth that's on screen matches what's being said in the lyrics. There is no one right way to do it. Some people cut up a clip into the three mouths(Open, half open, closed) and just paste in the appropriate mouth. Other people actually go in and stretch a mouth to more fit what the mouth shape should be. The thing is, trying to do this on a moving character is a nightmare. However, if you are going to attempt it, don't half ass it. Nothing is worse than seeing half sync half lip flap.

By far the biggest issue right now though is flow. You picked an incredibly fast song, and you're trying to match beats, but your AMV feels like it's just scenes without reason. I'm not sure if it's because the lyrics are going so fast that I can't process them, but there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why you picked the scenes you did, other than the "Pow" scene. Before you started working on this video, did you plan out what you wanted to see for every lyric? Sometimes it helps to watch the anime in question with the lyrics in front of you and take notes when you see something you think would fit, while also keeping in mind that the entire video should tell and overarching story. Not EVERY video needs to do this, but you should probably stick to the basics when first starting out.

I hope that helps.

[EMrain]

There are two things I can suggest you work on: Timing and lip-sync, and flow.

You seem to have at least a base understanding of when to do cuts. That's great! You'd be surprised at how few editors understand that. However, there is more to editing than just hitting the beats. There are other not so visible beats you should be trying to hit as well, and I'll give you an example. At about the 10 second mark, there's a "Pow" in the lyrics. You were close, but you didn't quite get it to sync up with the character getting hit. Now, I'm not sure which would be better, having the punch be on the "Pow", or having the transition. Either way, as it is now, it looks a bit too late, so I'm not sure. It's an art, not a science, and it's gonna take a few tries to get right.

Lip-syncing is very hard. You have to spend a lot of time making sure the mouth that's on screen matches what's being said in the lyrics. There is no one right way to do it. Some people cut up a clip into the three mouths(Open, half open, closed) and just paste in the appropriate mouth. Other people actually go in and stretch a mouth to more fit what the mouth shape should be. The thing is, trying to do this on a moving character is a nightmare. However, if you are going to attempt it, don't half ass it. Nothing is worse than seeing half sync half lip flap.

By far the biggest issue right now though is flow. You picked an incredibly fast song, and you're trying to match beats, but your AMV feels like it's just scenes without reason. I'm not sure if it's because the lyrics are going so fast that I can't process them, but there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why you picked the scenes you did, other than the "Pow" scene. Before you started working on this video, did you plan out what you wanted to see for every lyric? Sometimes it helps to watch the anime in question with the lyrics in front of you and take notes when you see something you think would fit, while also keeping in mind that the entire video should tell and overarching story. Not EVERY video needs to do this, but you should probably stick to the basics when first starting out.

I hope that helps.

Ok, first off, the POW sequence is not off sync because "Pow!" is spoken right after the last of Mega Man's kick and the first of Guts Man getting knocked back is right when the P in pow is pronounced. Also, to refute the statement of 'scenes without reason', the whole underlying theme of the AMV is a battle oriented theme. The song lyrics don't refer to Mega Man specifically, but the song's core theme and the theme of what the song talks about is battle oriented, just like MegaMan NT Warrior. (in the songs case it refers to Captain Falcon in Super Smash Bros) Secondly, orally speaking, how wide someone opens his/her mouth is not the same for every person. Where exactly a person's upper and lower lips are positioned when speaking certain words is not exact for every individual, and animation of the variety of what's shown in my AMV is not intended to mimic millimeter-perfect details of actual oral speech. You said it's more of an art and not a science, meaning that art doesn't have as many clear cut rules like science does, the video and audio events of an AMV don't have to sync up exactly for them to be properly interpreted; animation of NT Warrior's variety is not meant to be realistic, that's what makes it great.

Now, in terms of cutting, switching from clip to clip faster than ~15 cuts per second would likely be too fast to make the video intelligible; it would cut too quickly to clearly understand exactly what's going on.

Back to timing. For the average viewer, despite the small imperfections present, the very small frame offsets ( i.e. 1 - 5 frames) are most likely not going to stick out like a sore thumb. If you have to analyze the video frame-by-frame to notice such slight imperfections, such an offset that small is trivial and won't make a real difference watching the video normally.

[Xophilarus]

Ok, I will get to the video, but first I feel the need to address your attitude.
You posted in the opinion forums, therefor, implying you want honest opinions on your video. The first thing I see from you, however, is just a long post of you arguing with someone who took the time to make a well written opinion of your video that highlighted both the good and bad in your video. You do not have to agree with everything or even anything someone says about your video, but what is good for you to do is at least show some respect, which there is none of here. I don't even see a simple thank you. All you do is tell them why they are wrong, which helps nobody. Even if you disagree with an opinion, it is still good to look into and try and figure out why they thought so. Let's take the "pow" for example. I agree with you it is synced, but the lyric is so pronounced, it would have been better to use a scene that really hits it hard. Keep in mind you are new to amv editing and the community so there is a lot for you to learn and that is 100% ok. Even people who have been editing for a long time can improve. It is one of the great things about it. I am sorry if I sounded rude or harsh, but I felt it was important to be said. If you want to talk with me about it more and such, just shoot me a message ^.^

Ok, now for the actual video, there are a LOT of good ideas and things here. You do pretty well with the pacing the song has established, but if there is so much going on for you to sync to then I agree you should focus on hitting as many as you can, without sacrificing overall flow of course. Now this doesn't have to be done by cutting more, it can be done by using more internal sync from the footage and possibly getting creative with VERY subtle effects, be careful about those though.
As far as the lip sync, I'm sorry, but no matter how I look at it, it is pretty weak. Firstly, you argue not everyone says words the same way, but if you speak the words in the song with your own mouth, I highly doubt you would end up with the same shape and width at all. In addition, the timing of the mouth opening and closing on the words does not match up as well. Lip sycing is not hard, but it is tedious so if you don't want to deal with it, it is a lot better for your video to avoid it ^.^ The thing about amvs is, yes it is an art so yes there is no right or wrong way so to speak, but the thing is, when you don't have elements like weak lip sync, it is distracting, and can take the viewer out of the experience, which is the opposite of what you want.
I also agree there is a flow issue here as well. It is good to focus on how you can optimize the harmony between the clips. For example, when it goes from fighting to a kid smiling and talking, it is really jarring and breaks the flow of the video. I also think you would benefit a lot by using "ken burns" in your videos. In my opinion it is the best technique to use in amvs because it automatically increases the flow and pacing of a video with pretty much no effort. Ken burns is where there I'd a slow zoom in or out so that with the occasional up, down, or side to side pans REALLY help.

I hope this helps! Most of the things you have going on are all around goof, just messy is all. I look forward to seeing what you do next!

[XStylus]

...first I feel the need to address your attitude.

RetroMegabyte, having read a number of your posts in other threads (the AX thread, the Animethon thread, etc), I'll second Xophy's sentiments regarding your attitude. In fact, after a few ill chosen comments you made in one particular contest's thread, I think I'll respond to them here rather than derail that contest's thread. Consider this post a bit of feedback regarding your attitude as an AMV editor.

Getting argumentative with someone who genuinely tried to give you beta advice is a great way to discourage people from helping you. Strutting around acting like you're an epic badass editor (see your posts in the AX thread, plus your signature) without even having made one video that made it into anything and then announcing your retirement as though you're capping a long and venerable career is a great way to make people ridicule you.

But worst of all, saying things like "I have no interest in this contest, f**k this" just because you didn't make it to the finals is a truly excellent way to piss off coordinators of multiple events, and is a giant middle finger to all of the participants who did make the finals. That's the absolute clearest example of poor sportsmanship I have ever seen, and you are not fit to call yourself part of this AMV Community so long as you continue to exhibit such, sir. A public apology to that coordinator and that event's participants is warranted from you.

To be honest, I'm convinced you're a troll that I'm stupidly feeding, but hey, maybe you're just a socially inept kid with an over-inflated ego who needs to be knocked down a peg. In that case, take your whupping, humble yourself a bit, and learn to listen to people. Then you'll find some people willing to give you a hand if they're confident you're not going to bite it.

[Castor Troy]

This is my new favorite thread.

[Kireblue]

I'm just waiting for the climax