Desynced

[Voidses_]

In a passage in my latest AMV I have almost completley desynced the video from the music. The idea was to make the AMV more dynamic and be able to further the story a bit. But because I'v seen the darn thing a million times I have no idea if it's working or just annoying.

Any thoughts?

[GuntherAMVs]

By "desynched," do you mean there is literally no sync in the video to the lyrics or the beat of the song?

If so, I think this is a brave idea, and I don't think I've seen it done before. Perhaps you would have to go about it carefully, or it might look like you're an inexperienced editor just messing around.

In writing or poetry, if you master the rules, you can break them in ways that are artful and intellectually stimulating, which is I think what you want to do here. However, sync in any form (lyric, beat, internal) is just pleasing to the eye and ear. When something looks "off beat," it is usually something someone would want to "fix," and they are therefore annoyed by it.

In some songs, there is an "off-beat" that echoes the steady, main beat. If you want to desynch the video and have it not appear to match the song in any way, maybe search for an off-beat you can use to anchor it, so it's not just chaos~.. Controlled chaos is usually fun to watch >:3

If I misinterpreted your statement and ended up rolling around in left field, please ignore my derpy comment ^^''.. Happy editing~ ^_^

[qyll]

Voidses, I know EXACTLY what you mean. When this happens to me, I just render what I have, watch, and try to detect flow. If I can detect flow, then I leave it. Otherwise, I adjust. Watch more videos and you'll develop a better sense of flow.

Another question for people since it's mildly relevant and I don't want to make a new topic: I was watching a few old videos and noticed that many of them were one or two frames off sync. I delayed the audio by a few dozen milliseconds and then it looked fine. At first I thought it was a problem with the media player, but then I realized that the problem could be with me. People might process audio and video by tiny fractions of a second sooner or later than another person. I guess an objective assay of that would be where you make a cut in relation to a beat on a waveform. For me, I usually cut 2 frames before a hit. How about you guys?

[HalOfBorg]

I DL TV shows to watch, and a lot of them come in with the audio off synch by about 1/4 second (to my ears), so I adjust the audio track and mux that in. Then I can watch it OK.

"Star Trek Phase II" (fan-made show) often has these.

[Arigatomina]

If you pause or slow the footage while the song continues to beat along, the viewer should know you did it on purpose. They might not like it, but they won't criticize your editing. If you just cut things at random, but still quickly, they'll probably think you're a lousy editor, or that you just got sloppy for a minute there.

I was watching a few old videos and noticed that many of them were one or two frames off sync. I delayed the audio by a few dozen milliseconds and then it looked fine.

Were they WMM vids? For a while there people had serious trouble trying to export high quality videos from windows movie maker and even when they managed it, there were missing frames so that by the end of the video the sync was off by seconds. I think it comes from wmm automatically blending frames. I run into messed up synch when I'm trying to convert avi vids, too, if they used a variable bitrate audio track. Either way, I doubt the problem is on your end.

[TritioAFB]

As long as the video seems an AMV and not as random clips with no synch at all, there's no problem.
I tenf to get also this feeling of missing the synch specially when the Audio Wave is not visible enough to say where the cuts should go

[Voidses_]

Great advice, I'll do my best to make it work.


GAO!

[CayenneFashionista]

Voidses, I know EXACTLY what you mean. When this happens to me, I just render what I have, watch, and try to detect flow. If I can detect flow, then I leave it. Otherwise, I adjust. Watch more videos and you'll develop a better sense of flow.

Another question for people since it's mildly relevant and I don't want to make a new topic: I was watching a few old videos and noticed that many of them were one or two frames off sync. I delayed the audio by a few dozen milliseconds and then it looked fine. At first I thought it was a problem with the media player, but then I realized that the problem could be with me. People might process audio and video by tiny fractions of a second sooner or later than another person. I guess an objective assay of that would be where you make a cut in relation to a beat on a waveform. For me, I usually cut 2 frames before a hit. How about you guys?

Yes, I've noticed some editors will put a cut before the hit, I've seen others put them after. There are a few editors I've never been able to get into because the offset is in the wrong direction for me, personally - that's a hunch, anyway.
I put the cuts a frame or two early if memory serves. I've never received positive feedback re cut timing though so who knows

[Kai Stromler]

Another question for people since it's mildly relevant and I don't want to make a new topic: I was watching a few old videos and noticed that many of them were one or two frames off sync. I delayed the audio by a few dozen milliseconds and then it looked fine. At first I thought it was a problem with the media player, but then I realized that the problem could be with me. People might process audio and video by tiny fractions of a second sooner or later than another person.

It may be coming from the video, but at this level of grain what you're really running into is perceptive closure. Two frames out of sync is less than 0.1 second off, and unless you are really, really, locked in on cut discipline versus editing choices, this is barely perceptible. The mind, in both the case of the editor and the audience, will elide the difference and make it work. This is the same phenomenon that turns this guy

-_-

into a face; we autocomplete patterns when we think they should be there.

On a more technical theory/mathy level, assuming 24fps video and a 120bpm audio track, the most any given cut can be out of synch with something is 6 frames, or 0.25 seconds. (120bpm = 2 beats/sec = 12 frames between beats; any cut will either be 6 frames or less after one beat or six frames or less before the next.) This is also pretty close to the closure threshold (which does vary from person to person). Faster music is actually easier to edit to, rather than harder, if you're concerned about "synch", because the space between beats goes down as you pack more of them into a given timespan.

--K