So, I am sure a lot of people who watch my videos have questions about them. Okay, there are probably none, as I have never gotten any questions but I figured that it would not hurt to explain the how and why! I am going to go about this one by following points!

The music

It is called a …Music video for a reason. There wouldn’t be one without music! And just like I am trying, and failing, to make this a big point, it is indeed the most important for me! The choice of the song is important!

But of course this is not professional work, it is personal, meaning that while the song has to fit perfectly, it has to be a song that I personally love to listen to! After all, I am in a way making these videos for myself (more on this later).

So, first I choose the song and usually the perfect song is already in my library, if it is not, I go out searching for one, using special key words that I think represent the feelings I wish to convey and fit the couple then off I go searching. First I look up the lyrics then I lookup the song the lyrics are for and if I love it, then it joins my library and off we go!

I find that this makes the editing much easier because the clips you are to use are easy to pin-point so less headache there!

Yeah, I rarely, if at all, pick a random song and then try to fit the video to it, I tried it few times and every time I got a major migraine so…no more of that!

The Clips

It goes without saying but of course I watch the movie/series/etc before I make a video about it! In doing so, the couple or ship has to be ones that I fall in love with no matter the quality of everything else. As long as I fall in love with the ship, then off to the schedule they go!

Speaking of clips, the quality matters too! Usually for series I try to wait for Blu-rays to come out but if I have access to 4K content before the Blu-rays, then I use those and condense them down to 1080p vids, or as of late, 1440p!

I love quality and if you have watched any of my videos, then you know that SD is not in my vocabulary! Yeah sure, I made an exception with Spider Lilies but that is my 2nd favourite lesbian movie and it has been over 13 years already! I doubt a Blu-ray is ever coming out! If it was, it would have beat Miao Miao for crying out loud!

The Idea / Target Audience

Unlike most fanvid editors, I make videos for two audiences in mind! 1 is myself, like I mentioned! That is a lot of content! Imagine how much content I own! I don’t have enough terabytes to hold all that content! And so I need these videos to be at the ready to be watched when I am craving since the source data is either on physical media or on cold data drives (that are outside my computer). And so I make the video and get rid of the data!

The other audience is the people that have already watched the show/movie/etc. I make videos with those people in mind! Think of it like Fan Fiction! You would be pressed to like a Fan Fic based off of character you don’t know, right? (Reason why I hate AU fics BTW)

And so ,even the choice song is based off of the idea that the people who are going to watch the video have knowledge of the ship and will understand the music choice and whether I am going hardcore in the FEELs or light!

This is also why I don’t do DIALOGUE videos! I have received requests to do that but unless it is important to the video idea, like the PRETTY LITTLE LIARS and SHISHUNKI GOKKO ones, I never ever do dialogue. Also Netflix is a dick to dialogues but really, that’s not the problem!

The Technicalities!

What programs do I use? Four mainly:

1. MAGIX VEGAS PRO
2. DVDFAB
3. Xvid4PSP

Vegas Pro is the editing software I use! Yeah, I have tried Premiere out a failed many times but no matter how much I research the topic I just can’t get the audio to work correctly in editing! Every year I try it out, and every time I fail!

Also I love Vegas’ preview of the effects, the miles ahead ease of use, and the recently added godly feature (though still in trial) or importing mkv files! And the audio just works, no matter the format or bitrate, like, how can I not love it!

But sometimes things don’t work out, like for some reason my ripped A GIRL AT MY DOOR AVC file gives me hell when editing! This is actually the only reason I keep trying out Premiere Pro. It seems it can handle that file just fine! Seriously, this file has given me real hell, I have edited four different projects with it and it always crashes while I am in the frikkin thick of things! Half way through and shit hits the fan! It ain’t a joke! Maybe I should re-rip it to a different format than m2ts? But I need a new BDROM drive…arg!

As for DVDFab, I use that to rip my Blu-rays to uncompressed m2ts files!

And for Xvid4PSP, When the source is not Blu-rays, I use it to remove the audio (much better in editing as you don’t have to worry about that) and convert the other formats to MP4 which is the best format for editing in!

But Where Are The Effects!?!

Probably a lot of people are going to be shock by this but I hate Video Effects! I hate them so much I only use them like once or twice, and that’s the total number of clips I use them on!

Yeah, reason why I am not hot on most AMVs. Reason why the legendary Aluminium Studios is still to this day my favourite AMV maker and the one I took my lessons from! Yeah sure he still used effects (and with masterly given the time period) but he used them acceptably!

No, I am not epileptic, I just hate effects!

Most of the effect-like things you see in my videos are just transitions and even those I use sparingly! Not putting the whole clip into a transition, I do not!

And I think that about covers it all!

So yeah, I just wanted to get that out there!

Ja