How has the AMV landscape changed?

[MimS]

I could actually try to answer this question since I went on hiatus in 2008 and came back in 2011. Maybe it's just my imagination but I noticed a few changes in style:

- Everybody is doing pan/zoom/camera motion/mask transitions

- People have increasingly learned how to AE

- Cross-overs became more popular (Umika's amvs being the best examples here)

- Amvs look more and more like they're made by graphic designers

About the org:

- Fewer active members, less active forum

- Nobody leaves opinions anymore

- We are still pretentious

This.

[Kionon]

- Everybody is doing pan/zoom/camera motion/mask transitions

I admit, I have seen an increase in this. I'm not sold on its use for every video however. If the video is fairly simple, I actually think it come off as too much.

- People have increasingly learned how to AE

Ugh... ...not I, said the Kio.

- Cross-overs became more popular (Umika's amvs being the best examples here)

Crossovers have always been popular. I think they've become easier to do with current software and technology, but I mean... Look at Tainted Donuts. If a crossover was pulled off well, it was always welcome.

- Amvs look more and more like they're made by graphic designers

That's in part because of software changes and in part because to be blunt, we are. I do a large amount of graphics design work in my videos, I just hope, usually, that no one notices because my videos usually aren't videos where I want it to be obvious. Huge chunks of my videos are actually tif/png/psd files. And then there's credits. I now look at credits as entire unique works, and I think my graphic design work shows up in my credits. Minmay 2.0's credits and 泣くないで's credits are especially full of graphic design work married to beat sync of chosen credit audio.

You would be hard pressed now to find many editors which are not proficient in the use of Photoshop and without some fairly significant understanding of graphic design work. The further you go back in time in the hobby, the fewer and fewer editors you can say that for, until you arrive at the late 90s, early 2000s and only a handful of editors really knew how to utilise photoshop even though it was well integrated into Premere 6.0 and 6.5, and those that could were often the top editors we now consider old school legends.

For myself I learned graphic design as part of my political work. I didn't just make commercials or campaign videos. I also made mail-pieces, flyers, posters, etc...

- Fewer active members, less active forum

This saddens me the most out of any of the changes I've seen to the Org. The hobby isn't dying but the diffusion of remix culture, especially via YouTube, has killed the Org's ability not only to be the primary repository of AMV subculture but also of its ability simply to maintain its previous level of influence and activity. I remember when we used to see posts every few seconds during peak hours. Now... I'll be happy if I see a few posts a day. And I'm at fault. I don't post when I'm not editing, and given how little editing I've allowed myself to do over the past few years... Of course, when it comes right down to it, no individual is responsible for this, and no particular group of editors. We still have thirty to forty registrations per day, but less than one in those thirty or forty ever post to the forums. I know, I've actually been checking. I imagine most of those registrations are merely for access to local, and there is no broader interest in being involved in the hobby.

- Nobody leaves opinions anymore

This is not a change from 2008. This happened pretty much as soon as stars and quick comments became the main form of feedback. It is why I opposed them when they were first mentioned, opposed them when they were first implemented, and will likely continue to oppose them until they die, the Org dies, or I die. I haven't left an opinion in years, so I don't excuse myself. I should do better, and this is what Review was in fact started to try to address, a resurgence in opinion posting. I'd bring it back, it's still active, I am still channel founder, if people are willing to help me. I can't do it alone. I need a rotating cast of panel moderators...

- We are still pretentious

Course we are. Fuck hosatchel.

[BasharOfTheAges]

We still have thirty to forty registrations per day, but less than one in those thirty or forty ever post to the forums. I know, I've actually been checking. I imagine most of those registrations are merely for access to local, and there is no broader interest in being involved in the hobby.

Most of those registrations are bots. Before we IP banned all of Russia and China over at the AAC forums we got at least 20 new bot registrations a day. This is a much bigger forum and doesn't have the luxury of banning those regions, so they keep showing up.

[Rider4Z]

- Everybody is doing pan/zoom/camera motion/mask transitions

I admit, I have seen an increase in this. I'm not sold on its use for every video however. If the video is fairly simple, I actually think it come off as too much.

i blame shin.

i think it can work for simple videos as long as it remains subtle and isn't too obvious; when it's used to give the illusion of movement instead shouting "I'M A MASK!".

[Melanchthon]

Personally, I don't get major use of color correction unless communicating something specific through the music video, like a flash back. The video is already corrected to the way the director wanted it to be afterall.

Colour correction in what sense? Changing the time of day (or other background lighting) of a scene?

[JudgeHolden]

- Everybody is doing pan/zoom/camera motion/mask transitions

I admit, I have seen an increase in this. I'm not sold on its use for every video however. If the video is fairly simple, I actually think it come off as too much.

i blame shin.

Yep, nobody ever did masked transitions before Shin.

[trythil]

The hobby isn't dying but the diffusion of remix culture, especially via YouTube, has killed the Org's ability not only to be the primary repository of AMV subculture but also of its ability simply to maintain its previous level of influence and activity.

I think one big reason for this is the failure of .org to differentiate itself from YouTube in any meaningful way. I feel like I've written about this before but can't find a public reference, so here's some tangents. I've spolier-tagged it for the 99% of people who don't care.

Spoiler :

YouTube has some serious weaknesses as a community and archive for AMVs. Or, for that matter, any focus on video-oriented communities. Jason Scott's Archive Team talk at DEFCON 19 contains a quote that I think can be applied well to YouTube: "Google is an archive in the same way that a supermarket is a food museum."

These weaknesses are:

• There's no promotion of a community as a whole; all you get is a comment feed. Only a small number of people at the top get any sort of significant exposure. You'll find communities based around YouTube channels in e.g. Skype chat rooms, but you won't find anything that ties them together aside from other scattered channels.
• Automated takedown and banning systems. These make establishing any sort of long-term presentation of AMVs impossible. Making additional accounts on YouTube to get around this is a standard practice, but it's also batshit insane.
• Automated advertising systems. This isn't quite as bad as takedowns, but it's still annoying.

I'm sure there's more, but that's what I've managed to identify so far.

The .org has done a very poor job in demonstrating the impact of those problems for AMVers and that it has remedies for those problems. Here's how I think .org can remedy the above problems:

• It's much easier to promote a sense of a single community when you limit your focus. The Lip Flapper, active twitter feed, Facebook page, and site contests are an excellent start. I'm working on technical mechanisms to give those and similar activities more impact, e.g. real-time listings of active forum topics and new page layouts that give contests and special events enormous amounts of room on a page.
• .org is a smaller target. YouTube has automated takedown systems and has to deal with tons of takedown notifications/counter-notifications a day. .org has had to deal with, uh, a few. (AFAIK, the only one that was made public is the Wind-Up Records issue.)
• .org can be reengineered to provide durability for videos. That's actually where a lot of my .org-related work has gone over the past couple months: devising a system that can keep serving videos even in the face of takedowns by distributing the .org database and application code across multiple locations and owners. Takedown is like unrecoverable object loss, and an event like FBI shutdown is really not much different than catastrophic hardware failure. There's technical measures to deal with both. (Now, technical measures alone won't get us to a point where AMVs are out of legal limbo, but they're needed to keep on the pressure to effect the social and legal changes to protect AMVs.)

We can advertise these as advantages and (once some more work has been done) demonstrate that we have a better solution than YouTube for AMVs. I think after that word will spread on its own.

.org also needs a lot of work to whip it into shape. One concrete example: entering a new video. Do that on YouTube, and then try it on the .org. On YouTube it's a two-step process that you can execute entirely in your web browser. On the .org, it's eight steps -- six in your browser, one in an FTP client, and another step back in your web browser. It's a lot of obstacles for no goddamn reason. (No, it doesn't even ensure data quality. I've scrapped all publicly available video pages and I can show you a lot that are just filled with garbage.)

None of that is impossible; it just takes time and effort. I'm investing a little of both, and I think I can get there. (The process I've designed is one page to enter and upload a video. Better than YouTube.)

[Rider4Z]

i'll be honest, my last 2 videos entered here in the catalog i haven't yet uploaded. i left a link to youtube to be viewed there. reason being is i'm tired of other youtube users grabbing my vids (sometimes immediately after uploading here) and posting them to their own accounts. it used to not bother me when i saw one here or another there, but it's gotten out of hand. granted most give credit, but it's getting irritating seeing another user with thousands of watchers and views and likes when they didn't do any of the work. that might just be me being petty tho.

[Melanchthon]

I wouldn't really care if someone snagged one of my vids, put it up on Youtube, and got thousands of views. I make videos because I like it, but I release them because I want other people to see them. I got all my first few AMVs off WinMX, and while people didn't cut off the credits or change the file names there wasn't any way of adding attribution not already in the video or file name.

I consider an individual Youtube video page to be as meaningless as the open WinMX window was. Who cares if there's an account name on the Youtube page? It's just a way to watch the video, and the name might be gone tomorrow anyway.

[Rider4Z]

one video didn't kill me. but EVery SIngle VIdeo gets irritating