Dance video project completed!
Sorry, but I’m going to be that guy.
Overall, I would have to say that it was okay to watch but I don’t have much desire to watch it again. I know it was a ‘just for fun’ video, and as that it worked fine. Work on the quality, and it will be much better. But don’t let this discourage you from working on future videos, in fact I’d look forward to better efforts. I’ll explain.
The execution, planning and coordination were good. You managed to get a group of people all together to work on this, which can often be half the struggle. You chose some interesting locations and people placement. What really needs to be worked on is the quality. I don’t know if it was just me, but viewing the video it got a bit stuttery, and the audio quality also seemed a little low. This makes it very hard to watch for me, others may not have this problem. While AMVs aren’t exactly my own strong point (I can sorta make them, but writing is more my style) I have known a few people who have made excellent ones, I’ll pass on some advice.
The final encoding is important. You don’t want to drop too much in size/quality, since that can affect the final product to detriment, especially audio. But more important is your source material. If your source material is imperfect, then you’ll never get a nice and polished end result. Also, the music and timing. You did a fairly good job with it, but don’t be afraid to slow down or speed up the video a bit (not excessively) to help match up.
Thank you for the constructive criticism Jaric.
Yes there certainly is a lot that could be better about it.
But this is as I say the first time I’ve done anything like this and I used completely free software.
When and if future videos happen, more of an effort will be put into retaining the quality through the process of editing, exporting, uploading etc.
I’m not to sure how I can improve the audio quality. To me it sounds alright.
I know it’s a very bass heavy song but I didn’t edit the audio in anyway.
I had the same issues with the stuttering of the video and “scratchy” sound, for the lack of a better word, perhaps the source of the audio file? Almost sounds like it was turned up too loud and the system couldn’t handle it.
Apart from that I think you got some great ideas and I liked it! Maybe try experimenting with fly by’s and zooming in or out. Maybe some vistas (part of it) could work for that, should show the players.
All in all good job!
“Whose Kitten is this?” – “It’s a Charr baby.”
“Whose Charr is this?”- “Ted’s.”
“Who’s Ted?”- “Ted’s dead, baby. Ted’s dead.”
“Whose Charr is this?”- “Ted’s.”
“Who’s Ted?”- “Ted’s dead, baby. Ted’s dead.”
I’ve come to the conclusion the stuttering was due to my CPU being an Intel – i3 – 3.4GHz. I think that although this is easily good enough to play GW2 with a good frame rate and quality it probably isn’t all that great when rendering a video but i’m no expert on computer systems.
This was just for a bit of fun after all. I think I will refrain from making any more videos for a few months until I can get more time and refine the quality or upgrade my system a bit.
Vista fly bys are a good idea I’ve heard a few times since I made this. Wish I had included some. I did use one vista at the end to try to catch people jumping into the volcano but we couldn’t get the shot just right but I used some of it anyway. (You can just about see at least two people from the group falling in that scene)
I’m also not entirely sure what went wrong with the audio but I will most likely not use such a bass heavy song in the future. The audio wasn’t edited by yer maybe the volume did something as you say? I don’t know.