Just a quick note about vids (since I've watched two hours' worth of Supernatural vids tonight)

[kate]

One of the things I've noticed about a lot of the vids I've been watching is that the songs are just Too. Damn. Long. There are a lot that start out strong but then either end up losing coherency in the middle or repeating clips over and over. Seriously, if you only have a couple minutes' worth of material, why are you choosing a song that's four and a half minutes long? Cut out the bridge if it doesn't fit. Do you really need twelve choruses? No, of course not! I find it funny that a lot of vidders (and this is just youtube, I don't believe this is anywhere near the best and the brightest of fandom, Festivids has shown me quite clearly that there are vidders who do this sort of thing, and do it well) don't think to cut the song up the way they cut clips up. You have to have an ear to do it, because you can't just mash two parts of a song together unless they work harmonically (or unless you're looking for a jump cut, which, musically is a little weird, but I'd love to see someone make work), but I imagine that most vidders have a pretty good ear, it's part of the job to make the clips and the music work together.

ETA: This wasn't really me bemoaning the entire vidding community, though I grant you it sounds like it (it was 2:30am, please cut me a teenie bit of slack). ESPECIALLY since I don't do this. I don't generally criticize (another reason this post is even here - I would never have posted this if I had been sober non-sleep-deprived). I certainly don't critique things I don't do, which, at least for now, and likely for a long time yet, is all vidders ever - even the people who made the vids I don't particularly like are obviously waaaaaaaay ahead of me, as I've never even tried it. This was me making an obvservation about vids that I was watching on one particular medium (one I think is maybe similar to FF.net in some ways? as it seems that the vids are generally of a lower quality than those of, for example, Festivids, a lot of which were hosted on vimeo and other sites (my vimeo experiences in general have been quite lovely!)). And busaikko points out below that editing music is harder than I think (which is not a surprise to me, not at all), and that a lot of folks don't have the time or resources to be able to do it effectively. If I figure out how to do it, I am going to make a giant meta post on how to edit music, because I want people to be able to do this so they can tell the stories they want to tell and aren't constrained by their resources. /ETA

I pretty much intend to edit my songs, probably fairly early on in the process and maybe some later, if there's clip trouble. I have a feeling I will be editing the shit out of the music a lot to accommodate my ideas (I tend to have ideas for parts of songs, with other parts of those same songs that are completely inappropriate for the concept).

So anyway - rec me some vids? I'm stuck on Supernatural at the moment, so of course I'd love some truly amazing stuff there (any pairing or RPF (also any pairing) or gen of either), but I won't turn down any suggestions for amazing vids. I only have a couple that come to mind, but My Brilliant Idea by lim (SGA, McShep) is my favorite to date. Plus lots of multi-fandom things by thingswithwings because xie's amazing. Also, I just recced cupidsbow's Red Right Hand, Dean/Castiel.

Comments

[busaikko]

Some people do edit the music, but it's... not really that easy, at least with Audacity. My job involves extensive editing of spoken audio, that's no problem, but editing a song has never worked for me (cavet: am not musical at all).

You also have to look at what the vidders are working with. Many YouTube vidders use Windows Movie Maker, which is a hideous hard-to-use program (crashes every 5 minutes, no backups)- but free and widely available. AFAIK you cannot edit music in WMM, which means you need another program to do that. Festivids and VividCon vids tend to be made by people who usually put a lot of money into having good computers and editing programs... and therefore turn out more polished-looking final products (I've always used only WMM in my vids, so I can recognize a lot of the effects that I don't have!.. like the ability to crop video or zoom in ;_; *covets* ).

Jescaflowne is one of my favorite vidders. She did Another Sunday in SGA, and Can Delight which is AWESOME (http://www.youtube.com/user/jescaflowne).

In SPN I love the crack/meta vids like Jizz In My Pants (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQptF_iCfok) and 9 to 5 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQnf81dQr9U). And At the Movies! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtcxK9N7Brc) My only SPN vid was crack >.> [http://www.sendspace.com/file/3aux7e while I'm in an uploading frenzy]

My favorite SGA/SG1 vid is Long-Distance Call because it captures the EPIC and the problems and the WONDER, basically why I love the show (http://archiveofourown.org/works/452273). Bironic's Soccer Practice John/Ronon is also awesome: http://bironic.livejournal.com/231839.html [And because watching all these vids made me nostalgic, here's John Sheppard in The Great Escape and the vid that's John's POV in John When He's Gone (so, um, it's graphic underage noncon and sad) Outer Space. I had this vid in my head for years,a nd collected footage from here and there - not being able to crop means that the clips have to work as is, which >.< hard!]

The thing about vidding that I love is that I get stories in my head and I can show them with words. What I hate is that unlike fic, which in the end is the same if I wrote it in Notepad or on the backs of receipts, vids are really constrained by having good tech and source material, and it shows....

[kate]

I love you! Seriously.

I hadn't meant to sound like a whiny baby whiner with a superiority complex (which I obviously did, but cat's out of the bag now). This was one of those "arg this is annoying me I want to post about it" moments that has me squinting at it sideways today because I would never have posted this if I had given it even a little bit of thought.

But now that it's here, thank you. I'm not surprised to hear that editing music is waaaaay difficult - there's a lot of layers to that shit, and even if you have amazing equipment it's got to be tough, and I think most of us just don't have the kind of equipment to make it really feasible. I totally feel you there. If I ever contribute anything ever to the vidding community, I hope for it to be a way to edit music relatively easily and cheaply so people can tell the stories they want to tell. That's the most important thing.

Thanks for the recs! :D

[busaikko]

Eh, no worries! Vidding is kind of like singing... if you're going to record a song, it's going to sound better done in a studio with an actual band. But people who have to let the music out will do that even if all they have is a cassette deck and a guitar (see also: John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats, who has tape hiss on his CDs ♥).

In one sense YouTube is kind of like FF.net, in that the newbies are just discovering "Whoa, I can *do* this!" and making baby-steps vids [er... I made many of these]. But on FF.net a person can become a brilliant writer just by studying how to write and learning better grammar and spelling. On YouTube, what amaze me are the incredible vids that I know must have been made with WMM, but are just taking that "tape deck+guitar" level tech and forcing it to deliver brilliance.

Another SGA favorite! The Choice by mamoru22 (McShep), which is what's called "constructed reality" (the video shows something that didn't happen in canon *g*). And the vid Too Good to Be True digitally puts Ronon and Rodney into shots they weren't in in canon. (These two vids have some great kisses that, um, didn't happen in the canon I have *is sad*)

(Do you know Torchwood? There's a great MPreg vid for that, Papa Don't Preach (excellent use of Madonna!) by greensilver and fan_eunice.)

Um. I love vids? You should probably stop me....

ETA: And you've seen High School Never Ends by Gab, right? SG1 and SGA and a perfect match of song to clips.

[kate]

God, I do know - when you have to do something, you have to do it, whatever way you can. I can imagine the frustration of being limited by the programs and clips you have to work with. I imagine when I finally have the opportunity to start vidding I will experience this too. I am going to work on editing music first and foremost though (I have a feeling soleta will do a lot with the clips). I hope I can come up with a good way to do it. Lots and lots of practice.

Thanks for the recs, lovely! <33333

[busaikko]

I highly (lowly?) anti-rec Windows Movie Maker, but if you do end up using it, you can ask me anything ♥

[kate]

Excellent - I like anti-recs as much as recs. We'll need to look at programs and stuff and see what we can figure out.

Cheers! <3