Zarxrax
02-19-2007, 12:56 AM
We receive a LOT of entries for AMV Hell 4. The vast majority of them get rejected almost immediately. Here are some tips to help make some videos that we might actually consider using:
1. Read the Rules.
A 5-year-old child could do a better job of following rules than the majority of people we receive entries from. In many cases, it is very clear that the submitter did not take the effort to read the clearly posted rules, and in some cases it seems like the person did not even understand the concept behind AMV Hell.
There are quite a few rules, but there are three in particular that get violated a lot and I consider them to be the most serious. For starters, submit your video in AVI format using the recommended codecs and at 640x480 resolution. If you send me a video thats in WMV format, or 320x240 resolution, I am seriously not even going to watch it. It just goes in the crap folder right away. If you can't take the time to submit your video properly, I'm not going to take the time to watch it. Another problem that I see a bit of is having the DivX logo on your videos. Why the hell would we want to advertise for Divx in AMV Hell 4? You can turn this off in the divx options. Lastly, we get a few videos that contain subtitles. That's just tacky. Don't download fansubs then make a video out of them and leave subtitles all over it. Also don't just crop off half of your video to try and remove the subtitles. DO IT RIGHT. Try to buy or rent the dvd. If you can't do that, then at least use footage that doesn't have subtitles on it to begin with.
2. Learn how to get good quality.
If your video looks like crap, we probably aren't going to use it even if its quite good otherwise. A lot of the stuff we get probably wouldn't be that bad looking if the person submitting it just knew what they were doing. In many cases the submitter will actually sabotage their own videos by doing insane things like converting the audio to mono, or encode the video to 500kbps divx.
Here are some tips to help you get better quality. Try to follow as many as possible.
1. Try to use DVDs.
2. Don't use fansubs. Fansubs typically originate as tv captures. Some dude in Japan will capture the video off of tv, and it doesn't look all that great to begin with. Then he will apply some filters on it and compress it. Then some fansub group will grab it, throw some more filters on it, throw some subtitles on it, and compress it AGAIN. Then you grab it, and God only knows what horrible things you will do to it, but in any case, at this point it's probably already looking so bad that there is no hope for it.
3. Don't recompress things unnecessarily. When you work with your video, you should probably convert it to a LOSSLESS codec like Huffyuv or Lagarith. Don't compress your video to divx or mpg or wmv or anything like that before you edit it. THATS JUST STUPID.
4. Try to get the best quality audio you can. Audio ripped from a CD you own is the best choice. If for some reason you are going with audio from an mp3, AT LEAST get something better than 128kbit.
5. Don't recompress your audio before you submit the video to us. In fact, you should not be compressing audio at ANY step throughout the entire process.
6. Read this: http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech/
3. It's supposed to be FUNNY.
We receive videos that have absolutely no humor content in them. We don't want videos that you think are "cool" or "sad", or anything of the sort. We just want FUNNY videos!
4. Just because the clip you show matches the lyrics in the song, that doesn't make it funny.
This is probably the biggest problem I see in the majority of the videos. Someone out there listens to a song and it talks about a rose or something, and they think "Oh, the song said something about a rose! That series Utena has a lot of roses! I bet it would be funny if I used Utena with this song!" But of course it's NOT funny. Why would it be? If I came up to you and I said "Hey, I got a book!" and then I show you a book, do you think that's somehow funny? It's the same principle.
5. Lip sync is not funny.
Ok, so you have this really funny song. It's downright hilarious even. Now you make a video out of it by just having some random character lip-sync the words. We get a lot of videos like this. They all suck. It's great that you found a funny piece of audio, but its not funny because of your editing, it was already funny on it's own. You contributed NOTHING to it. If I want to go hear a funny clip from Family Guy, then I will go watch Family Guy, not your crappy lip-sync clip.
6. Did your video make you laugh?
If you can't even laugh at your own damn video, then why the hell are you sending it to us?
1. Read the Rules.
A 5-year-old child could do a better job of following rules than the majority of people we receive entries from. In many cases, it is very clear that the submitter did not take the effort to read the clearly posted rules, and in some cases it seems like the person did not even understand the concept behind AMV Hell.
There are quite a few rules, but there are three in particular that get violated a lot and I consider them to be the most serious. For starters, submit your video in AVI format using the recommended codecs and at 640x480 resolution. If you send me a video thats in WMV format, or 320x240 resolution, I am seriously not even going to watch it. It just goes in the crap folder right away. If you can't take the time to submit your video properly, I'm not going to take the time to watch it. Another problem that I see a bit of is having the DivX logo on your videos. Why the hell would we want to advertise for Divx in AMV Hell 4? You can turn this off in the divx options. Lastly, we get a few videos that contain subtitles. That's just tacky. Don't download fansubs then make a video out of them and leave subtitles all over it. Also don't just crop off half of your video to try and remove the subtitles. DO IT RIGHT. Try to buy or rent the dvd. If you can't do that, then at least use footage that doesn't have subtitles on it to begin with.
2. Learn how to get good quality.
If your video looks like crap, we probably aren't going to use it even if its quite good otherwise. A lot of the stuff we get probably wouldn't be that bad looking if the person submitting it just knew what they were doing. In many cases the submitter will actually sabotage their own videos by doing insane things like converting the audio to mono, or encode the video to 500kbps divx.
Here are some tips to help you get better quality. Try to follow as many as possible.
1. Try to use DVDs.
2. Don't use fansubs. Fansubs typically originate as tv captures. Some dude in Japan will capture the video off of tv, and it doesn't look all that great to begin with. Then he will apply some filters on it and compress it. Then some fansub group will grab it, throw some more filters on it, throw some subtitles on it, and compress it AGAIN. Then you grab it, and God only knows what horrible things you will do to it, but in any case, at this point it's probably already looking so bad that there is no hope for it.
3. Don't recompress things unnecessarily. When you work with your video, you should probably convert it to a LOSSLESS codec like Huffyuv or Lagarith. Don't compress your video to divx or mpg or wmv or anything like that before you edit it. THATS JUST STUPID.
4. Try to get the best quality audio you can. Audio ripped from a CD you own is the best choice. If for some reason you are going with audio from an mp3, AT LEAST get something better than 128kbit.
5. Don't recompress your audio before you submit the video to us. In fact, you should not be compressing audio at ANY step throughout the entire process.
6. Read this: http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech/
3. It's supposed to be FUNNY.
We receive videos that have absolutely no humor content in them. We don't want videos that you think are "cool" or "sad", or anything of the sort. We just want FUNNY videos!
4. Just because the clip you show matches the lyrics in the song, that doesn't make it funny.
This is probably the biggest problem I see in the majority of the videos. Someone out there listens to a song and it talks about a rose or something, and they think "Oh, the song said something about a rose! That series Utena has a lot of roses! I bet it would be funny if I used Utena with this song!" But of course it's NOT funny. Why would it be? If I came up to you and I said "Hey, I got a book!" and then I show you a book, do you think that's somehow funny? It's the same principle.
5. Lip sync is not funny.
Ok, so you have this really funny song. It's downright hilarious even. Now you make a video out of it by just having some random character lip-sync the words. We get a lot of videos like this. They all suck. It's great that you found a funny piece of audio, but its not funny because of your editing, it was already funny on it's own. You contributed NOTHING to it. If I want to go hear a funny clip from Family Guy, then I will go watch Family Guy, not your crappy lip-sync clip.
6. Did your video make you laugh?
If you can't even laugh at your own damn video, then why the hell are you sending it to us?