Runaway +fanvid link+

Okay, so DA doesn't allow you to upload video without going through a lengthy film submission process (or else converting to a low-quality Flash vid), and they don't allow you to upload fanvids. So how do I show you people what I've spent the past week or so playing around with?

Linkage linkage linkage! --> [link]

Beware, that monster is 15MB of pure fluff.

Clips are from "Kevin 11", "Framed", "Tough Luck", and the first six episodes of Alien Force (well, five if you only count the premier hour as one episode).


Origin rant below. You can read it while the vid loads in another tab/window:

So I was listening to a YouTube Caramelldansen misheard lyrics vid, and I happened to catch this neat snippet of song during the credits:
'Cause I'm all right, yeah, yeah
And I don't mind, yeah, yeah
Baby you're no longer creeping in my head...
And I'm okay, yeah, yeah
I'm on my way, yeah, yeah...
And it's time for me to face my perfect day!
I went and Googled it, and eventually found it was performed by some girl called Cascada. I of course looked up the entire song on YouTube, wanting to fit the lyrics with melody. I kinda liked it, so I clicked on the related lyrics videos, and I happened across this one called "Runaway"...

...And the muse immediately seized my arm and screamed, "GWEVIN FANVID! DO IT! DO IT NAO!"

Yeah. I actually started thinking of clips of the show while listening to it. But considering the number of terribly synced, less-than-wonderful fanvids I've seen (some are excellent, most are average, and a disturbing number are quite bad), I didn't want to end up one of those, "Ohmigaw, look at the dork!" videos. So I fussed with myself for a while. Do I listen to the rabid muse, or to the logic that says fanvids are not useful for either my DA gallery or my portfolio?

Well, I eventually went looking around on my computer and found the (DREADED! BUGGY! CRASH-HAPPY!) Windows Movie Maker. So I tried to import the song...

Movie Maker won't play iTunes .m4p files. So I had to hunt for FOREVER (and nearly get my computer taken over by an evil sound program that actually made my computer's speakers and headphones not work when it was turned on) to find a program that would convert it to an MP3. Then I went to download the episodes from Ben-10.net...and discovered that they'd taken down the original series and only had the Alien Force episodes!

So I put together what I could of the video using just the AF vids. With much cutting and pasting and combining and clipping and applying "Increase Brightness"...and restarting Movie Maker after it crashed...and occasionally restarting my entire computer...and I eventually had everything but the part at the beginning with the original clips.

And so I bugged the ever-helpful Macman into finding a torrent of the original episodes. He spent like a week downloading that giant 6 GB monster, including almost losing it when it froze up (thankfully it was resumable). Then he encoded them as .avi files and put them up on his web space for me to download.

Then Movie Maker decided it needed a codec. So I tried to find one, but couldn't without paying majorly for it. So he tried encoding it as an .asf file, with similar results. So he tried encoding it as an .mpeg, and again MM didn't like the format. So as I was attempting to not kill my faulty programs (automatically download codecs it does not), Macman managed to find a free codec for me to download. I got it, and was FINALLY able to work on finishing my fanvid.

So yes. This was something between a labor of love, an exercise in masochistic self-torture, and a lesson on patience. But it is FINISHED and it is DONE and it is GOOD. Or I think it is, anyway. Of course, after staring at something for a couple days, you tend to get kinda partial to it (and you start noticing little nuances in the animation ^_^).

Have fun.



This link will eventually be moved to my scraps section. It's just in my gallery so people who watch me but don't watch my scraps can see it.