mattoco

Well, I run all my settings on low, only have 1 GB of PC2700 RAM, and have an x800 XL. I don't usually see a huge frame rate drop unless there are a lot of effects going on at the same time. I blew through normal mode in about two days in order to get to Hardcore, and that put my character at around level 30. The pace with which you level depends on your play style, your character, and what game mode you're playing; if you're constantly killing things 3 or 4 levels above you you'll obviously be leveling faster than otherwise. Once you get past level 30, the game will start to slow down as you will likely be in nightmare mode, where the creatures out level you most of the time, making them harder to kill. The most distance between any two stations is 3 or 4 areas, and depending on your character and the area, it will take maybe an hour or so to get across all those areas. Time investment is not something that is emphasized in this game, as you can log in, immediately enter an area, kill some things for a few minutes, and log off. There is no transit time to speak of.

From what I've seen, there are a lot of problems on newer computers (specifically crashes and memory leaks), but they're working hard on fixing those problems. There are a lot of other bugs that definitely hinder the playability of the game, but I have still played through it on normal and have characters in all different game modes (mostly Hardcore Elite). I still think the game is a blast to play, and fortunately for me it does not have a lot of the common crashing issues that I hear about. I'm not certain about the state of the demo code, but if you aren't crashing or running out of memory on it, then you may want to try the full game. At this point I would say it is definitely worth buying for the experience, but whether or not you want to subscribe may be another matter. I think most people will just ride out the storm and enjoy the free online play. The game definitely has potential.

Wow, I'm glad to hear it went over well. BGC, I'll see what I can do about tweaking the syncing; there's a part of it that does not settle well with me either, but I haven't had the time to go over the footage again.

I have always felt Reuben's work carried with it such fervent emotion; for that it has and always will find a place with me. His talents were truly amazing and his passing can be summed as nothing short of a devastating loss for both his family and the communities he was involved in.

I have always felt Reuben's work carried with it such fervent emotion; for that it has and will always find a place on my playlists. His talents were truly amazing and his death can be summed as nothing short of a devastating loss for both his family and the communities he was involved in. I am interested in helping in whatever way I can with any tribute to his life and to the way in which it has profoundly affected us all.

I was told that credits such as those I used at the beginning of my preview videos should be removed for the final video I submit. As to uploading large high quality files, a quick Google search reveals the following (with doubtless many more out there). I do not vouch for the validity of these services, as I have not used any of them myself. I'll probably go with QuickSharing (appears the most simple): File Factory - 300mb (Free,Anonymous,deleted if not accessed for 7 days) MiHD - 200mb (Free,Anonymous) QuickSharing - 500mb (Free,Anonymous,deleted if not accessed for 30 days) Up-File - 1000mb (Free,Anonymous) As to the snatching of work, I'll probably leave the credited versions of the files on public viewing services (YouTube, Google, Stage6), whereas the direct link to the file itself will only be provided to the competition e-mail.

The audio for Every Story was not playing with the same tempo that the original was, as it had become stretched when I imported it. I've updated the video to remove the stretch, and have cut/resync the footage to accommodate. Every Story Begins with a Name, v4

More updates: Redid the FFA video with footage from Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus. Added footage to Every Story Begins with a Name to break up the longer scenes. It's not much, but it's there. Every Story Starts with a Name, v3 Full Frontal Assault, v2

The footage for that video remains largely uncut due to the fact that if I were to cut it in such a fashion, it could not possibly fit inside of the length of the music (due to the lack of footage for that particular setting); but I see what you're getting at, it's somewhat like how I commented earlier on the lingering aspects of it. There is a bit of footage to work with there, so I might try to implement some of it as b-roll, but I would think doing so would detract from the given scene. I think of it in comparison to what I have seen; breaking up a long sequence with something completely unrelated just doesn't happen; and for the particular source used in that video, there is not much related footage to work with. Thanks for the comment and the link, I'll take another look at it and see how I can implement it.

I've done some re syncing of the first two videos along with redoing the middle of Nomura Limit. I'll probably have the redone FFA finished tomorrow. Every Story Begins with a Name, v2 Nomura Limit, v2

Thanks for the comments and the insight behind them. I will admit that "Every Story Begins with a Name" was the piece that I put the most work into (i.e. more than a few hours), as it was a slower track that in my mind demanded a more precise melding between the video and the music, whereas the quick and cut "Full Frontal Assault" ("FFA") made it easy to switch between scenes; just a blessing and bane of the sources one works with. I agree with your comments on Nomura Limit: there were elements of it that lined up, but the latter part of the middle section just would not work; I would get one part synced right only to desync another. I'm either going to have to completely rethink the footage for that video (possibly expanding it until the final end, though that part of the footage is very slow and may not fit) or, failing that, pick new footage to use with the music. While on the topic of footage, I did deliberately leave out all mention of Sephiroth (save for in the intro) in "FFA" for the purposes of reserving that footage for my later work on Black Wing Metamorphosis. I will however be including some of that footage in the redone version of "FFA", which should hopefully provide more of the closure/completeness element you mentioned and less of the strung together slugfest (as I put it) that it currently is. As with many things, it can only get better (I hope) with time; so far it appears the 3 have been narrowed to 2. We'll see how my redone "FFA" fares against the current popular vote, and whether I can cook up something with Sephiroth. I'll probably have the time to work on it more closer to the weekend. And as a point of discussion (since we are our own worst critics), my current gripes about "Every Story Begins with a Name" are that I get the feeling that it is lingering on too long in the later half when there could be something else there (though I really do not have any footage to expand on that), there are some minor desync issues (i.e. the end of the breakdown where Cloud receives the Buster sword could be worked to coincide with the end of that particular flashback), I could not get the title logo to flash in like I wanted (a lens flare just won't cut it), and I am not particularly happy with the transitions between flashbacks. The blur out for the first flashback worked out (probably due to it being combined with a sliding transition), but the final blur out does not sit well with me; probably since the source is a light background and the destination is darker. I've tried flashes and fades as well to no agreeable effect. Perhaps a combination blur/darken to meld the two, or maybe use a combination blur and sliding transition as I did in the beginning; needless to say there are some things to work on here.

After becoming involved in this competition, I found I could not just stop at making one video for one track. Naturally this lands me in quite the dilemma as there can only be one submission per category, and since I do not possess any anime footage and am not much of an artist myself, one category is what I limit myself to. Therefore I submit these music videos here to the community so that they may be enjoyed, judged, scrutinized, and so on until I feel there is one particular submission worthy of being submitted for the contest. I may or may not add more videos to this list, for there certainly is no shortage of FFVII footage to work with here (only a shortage of time). Among those future videos I am still mulling around are a redone version of Full Frontal Assault that incorporates footage from more than just Advent Children, and a Black Wing Metamorphosis video. So without further ado: Every Story Begins with a Name, v4 Full Frontal Assault, v2 Nomura Limit, v2 Older versions: Every Story Begins with a Name Every Story Begins with a Name, v2 Every Story Begins with a Name, v3 Nomura Limit Full Frontal Assault Let me know what you think, what could be changed, or what might be missing. Emotion is as important as analysis. One change that any of these will see before being submitted is the removal of the video description in the opening seconds. Google was not being particularly friendly in providing these, but with a few reloads/refreshes/retries the videos should display.

I've finished my (first?) submission, and had a question regarding video quality. It's not specifically listed in the rules and I have not found any "common" bitrate dictated by other AMV contests (I've seen everything from no requirement to 3.3 Mbps). Obviously the logical answer is make the video quality as high as is reasonable, which leads me to my second question: where is a good place to host very high quality (100+ MB) videos, and do we have a limit on size? The 100MB+ hosting question is the primary concern for me as my video comes to 120MB at default, and cutting it below 100MB (specifically for hosting on RapidShare) noticeably impacts the quality.

Just to let you know, your request inspired me to take part in this (as it led me to some footage that swayed my decision on participating). I cannot say for sure whether that particular clip will be present in my production in its entirety or not, but I will say...we'll see.

After what seems like years lost to the ether, I can only imagine I found my way here after hearing Scott Peeples' Another Inspiration remix for Chrono Cross (probably got it off one of the many P2P programs of the day when searching for Chrono Cross music). I believe I registered here sometime later (not sure how long after discovering the site that was) to participate in a writing competition. I have since frequently visited the site and listened to all the new submissions that have been approved since then with hopes of one day submitting my own, but free time and technical skill (one music theory class to my name) are not on my side for such an endeavor.

I bought a Zen Stone Plus 2GB to replace my old MuVo TX FM (which survived for two years before the USB connection flaked out) this summer, looking for durability, cost effectiveness ($50), and a player that was a Mass Storage Class device (meaning I could put music on it by drag and drop, without having to use proprietary or third party software). By all accounts the Stone is a tough player to break unintentionally, and I am not disappointed with the interface (as it is very similar to my MuVo) or the output. The size is nowhere near 30GB, but I quite honestly don't need to have that much music on me at one time. I found the anythingbutipod.com website to be particularly useful in finding a replacement player; specifically the user input that can be found in the forums.

This game is definitely worth getting, even if you only play the single player campaign (35-50 hours). I was in the beta from late September on, and I am pretty confident that I will be purchasing the founders offer ("lifetime" subscription for $150) as I can see myself playing this game for a very long time. The game runs very smoothly on my 2 year old computer, and even with all the fancy settings (shaders,anti aliasing,shadows) turned down, the model and texture detail still make this game look great. The major concern at this time is that the DX10 version of the game really slowed down even newer computers, so we have yet to see if they fixed most of the frame rate issues with their release candidate. If nothing else, it is definitely something to keep an eye on; the success of the game will probably depend on the level of continuous support provided by Flagship (which at this time appears to be their selling point for the subscription based services). Naturally I should mention the music and music system (random and interchanging) is very nice, but there is no continuous stream of background music unfortunately (something that may be changed).