My first tutorial on post-processing with Avisynth is almost four years old and while a lot of stuff still holds true, ( I think it is time for an update on some things.  )

There are still people out there, who are very intimidated by avisynth and how to use it to prepare their sources. So I compiled example scripts and tried to break the necessary steps down into easy to follow instructions. Everything is better and more detailed explained in this part of the A&E's guide - The 'A&E's technical guide to All Things Audio and Video' contains a lot of information and is maybe overwhelming, if you just start out with Avisynth and don't feel so confident. But you should follow it step for step while installing the software you need, which is compiled here in AMVapp.

( Using Avisynth to prepare your source with example scripts )

Day 28 – Have you ever collaborated with anyone else, whether vidding together, or having an artist or writer work on a piece about your vid?

xandra_ptv and I did four Multifandom projects together - and it was crazily awesome. I did expect much more technical hassle, because I know that Xandra and I have different ways to set up projects and was so surprised that it was much easier to melt the pieces together. Again the magic lies in avisynth for me. The vidding process itself was a blast, we didn't went into it with detailed plans and so it felt very organic to react to new drafts and pick up ideas Xandra laid out. And it was the first time I did actual speed vidding besides one 48hours-challenge with charmax, just to keep up. I had a nagging voice in the back of my mind and on IM that if I wouldn't deliver my drafts, Xandra would steamroll over my parts and take over.

The Multifandom aspect really helped me in with the speed, because I could use iconic scenes left and right without the need to search for more obscure scenes. So I often did stick with the first idea that came to mind for a lyric. So three of the four vids were done very quickly for my usual snail pace back then and 'Those Days' just fucked me over. I suddenly draw a blank in the middle of vidding. I kept coming back to it every few months and watch our drafts and loved what we had so far, but I couldn't come up with where to go next with my part. And then along came a few new shows that had fascinating sibling pairings, so it all ended well.

We will do more themes - we actually had too many after the last project and not the patience to decide on a song. Men in chains, scar fetish, mentor relationships, dark/light, threesomes, just to name a few. Yes, we love fandom tropes.

Day 29 – What is your current project or projects?

I have a dozen set up in subfolders in my project folder. I have over 40 songs in my 'To vid or not to vid' folder. Xandra and me have shared what feels like thousands of vid ideas.

So the current projects that I want to finish are:
1. The X Files Season Challenge with Xandra (if we are ever crazy enough to do the Reverse X Files Season Challenge it has to wait - a few years)
2. The Sam/Ruby/Dean vid I lost the project in a crash and started to recover, even when it now does go into a different direction then the last draft Xandra saved from me.
3. The Vampire Diaries - Damon/Stefan. Nothing more than bare bones laid out from 'Those Days', but yeah, me likes

So the current projects that I want to start are:
1.1 With all the refreshed XF-knowledge pick up the project laying on my hard drive for years - because it's a fucking cool concept
1.2 Make that damn Scully vid anyway
1.3 Mulder/Scully/Krycek - C'mon, it can't be that hard.
1.4 Comedy vid - Seriously.
2. The Same Song/Same Fandom Challenge with Xandra
3. Another Remix-Challenge with Xandra
4. Festivid pinch hit
5. Get another vid scratched from my To-Do-List from back then
6. Multifandom vids with Xandra (Lots and lots of them)
7. Vid against a song - hard
8. Vid literal with a song - so fucking hard
9. Make another German song into a vid
10. Do a movie vid

Day 25 – Music – Do you listen to music while you rip source? Do you listen to your vid song immediately before vidding, months before vidding, or just while working on it?

I was always interested in the technical aspect of vidding. The whole backlog of stuff you have to do right, a lot of things even before you open Premiere. And then after you close it and can enhance your final encode. I mean I'm still easily distracted and lose hours hunting down information, especially when Xandra let me come near avisynth-filters. It's fascinating. It's also stuff an average watcher won't notice, besides thinking shiny and there is still so much possibilities out there, I could try and yeah, I love this part of vidding. I have preparing my footage down to a science, in the way I want it and which works best for me.

But I don't really like the actual prep work that comes with vidding, when I don't have the tools to further improve it or I have an inspiration I want to start on fucking now. I mean having to rip 5 seasons AtS and 7 BtVS for a vid, can make you question your commitment to your idea - hard. Or 9 seasons and two movies. This is my main reason, why I don't understand people, who clip their source - It's so much work and you have to do it again and again. Besides I absolutely need the whole season/show on my hands so that I can decide on a whim, preferable neatly packed as season-avs. I tend to do prep work when I don't feel very inspired to actually vid, to get it out of the way. So 2009 was a pretty good year for that kind of task and I could still pretend I would do some important chore for vidding, while perfecting my system. Luckily now I'm in the position that I have most of my sources ready to go and thanks to the Multifandom vids plenty I haven't even vidded solo yet or potential shows, just because I could run ripping and indexing on the background while reading fics.

I have done all mentioned options with music. I have songs I would love to vid, but haven't found the right fandom yet. 'Hey Pretty' was on the backburner for years, till SPN came along and made it a perfect fit. I have listened to songs on repeat for (a) week(s) to play around with ideas. 'Walk the walk', 'Feeling Good', 'Haunted' and 'Wood and Nails' - pretty much every song when I came back after a one year hiatus in 2006. Following my last hiatus in 2009/most of 2010 I have changed my way of approaching music in and for vidding. I have searched for hours for songs to vid a specific theme I want to explore, music became more canvas than painting. I think the best way to explain this would be that I'm now working with a more open framework, I don't need twenty support beams to hold up the vid.

I did give up on the idea that only the most perfect song can be vidded for characters/pairings. Because back then I just ended up listening to music for months and throwing away good enough ideas instead of vidding. This need for precision/an unique twist did drag me down, so now I take what seems like a good enough fit. What surprised me by this approach is the way, it feels different to form the narrative. I own the vid more, because the idea was before the song and so the structure is clearer. I do tend to need an hour or two with the song on the background to get used to the mood(swings), rhythm, beats and narrative. It still doesn't thump the feeling when you stumble over a song that transforms into perfection, but I take what I get till then.

Day 23 – When you post, where do you post to? Just your journal? Just an archive? Your own personal site?

My LJ, vidding and if I am a member of a fandom specific comm there, because people who are interested in this fandom should have a chance to find it without having to hop through loops in order to see the vid post. I recently added a vid masterlist page on my site, because I figured some people might only know me through that link.

I would like to post at youtube, but Germany has the worst representation of music artists with the GEMA - they are stuck in pre-internet-age. So pretty much everything is blocked here. Youtube and the labels try to force a compromise, but yeah, I don't see them reaching an agreement soon. Other streaming sites either disappear like imeem or stage6, or make a limit like BAM so for now I don't bother. Mostly because I will always rather download a vid then watch a streaming version.

Day 20 – Do you ever get ideas inspired from other people's stories, vids, or art in the same fandom?

Strangely there are fandoms I obsessively read fics in for example ST: Reboot or Merlin, which made me draw a blank vidding wise. I think it is because, I love the way authors expand the canon in all these awesome directions that are possible, but could not be explored in the show or the span of one movie. A very old concept picked up from fics that surprisingly made it out of development hell and was finished was Dawn/Spike. This pairing isn't my usual cup, but I was so intrigued by several great Dawn/Spike fics, that I had to try.

It maybe sounds a bit pretentious or natural, depending how you look at it, but my vids are often extensions of my fics (German, so don't bother). In tone and mood, best example would be 'Wood and Nails' - this is the way I saw Dean by the end of S2, beginning of S3 and I'm quite happy that the show later evolved in that direction. 'Clear the Area' is my view of Scully and 'My Skin' is the way I see Cordelia. So I often do character manifestos of sorts. Or a lot of my AtS vids picked up unconventional couples and ideas I used while writing and spinning them into moving pictures. I did write an epic 160k Cordelia/Spike fic among others for them and 'Haunted' became an outlet for this pairing, telling a different spin of their story in my head.

Although these fics and vids are often a result of fanon, because obviously I don't exist in a vacuum, but it is hard to pin-point the influence down to someone other than xandra_ptv. We have developed a perfect symbiosis, in which stealing the ideas of each other will not result in tears, but a damn happy outcome.


Day 21 – Sequels – Have you ever created a sequel to a vid you made, and if so, why, and if not, how do you feel about sequels?

Not a straight up sequel, occasionally I do a tandem of a pairing PoVs or I evolve from one couple to another, but this isn't really how sequels work. So no.

Day 18 – Where do you get the most inspiration for your vids from?

Watching a show or remembering a fandom can and will inspire me. The urge to vid this character fucking now is a drive. The song - and finding the right one for a vid idea can become such a trying quest - ties everything together. I love it, when I hear a song and it suddenly transforms and becomes all about a character. Best way to hit off a vid.

In the past I kept waiting for a flash of inspiration from a ideal song, but that resulted in long dry spells. This perfect storm of song, fandom and character is rare and unpredictable, so today I have a different approach. If I want to vid, I will think about a subject that intrigues me. If I have an idea or a theme I will search for song. I will take one that could work and make it work. This is exercise, this is me getting an concept out of my system. This is getting more experienced without the crushing weight on my shoulder to make a flawless vid. So that when I find a perfect song I won't be scratching my head, trying to figure out what that avisynth filter was for in the first place. Or how to prepare mkvs so that I can vid them in Premiere and make whole season-avs out of them.

So the most valuable lesson Xandra taught me in recent months, is to go for a crazy idea and run with it. Doesn't matter if I run it into the ground or it takes off. I won't get anything done overthinking vidding and all the inspirations stuck in my head? The vids that never made a timeline outside of my head? Are lost. And there are a few people out there, who really wouldn't mind spending five minutes of their time with Scully/Krycek or Dean/Ruby/Sam, so why not go for it? The mental road block of my own expectations won't do me any good. Vidding is fun and reminding myself of this fact and all the opportunities it creates, was pretty damn freeing this year.

Day 16 – Summaries – Do you like them or hate them? How do you come up with them, if you use them?

I always take a lyric line to sum up the vid. Not necessarily the one that spoke the strongest to me in the first place, but one that expresses the feel of the vid. I used to hate coming up with an additional summary - something deep and significant to best describe the thing you spend days, weeks, months obsessing over? Worst case scenario ten minutes before you hit the post button? Nightmare fuel. Nowadays it's easier, either I get hit by Xandra with summaries till something sticks or by now, I hit on random quotes and change a fitting one to my needs. I know, it's a bit lazy, but I like to pretend that my second language skills only go so far.

Day 14 – Ratings – how high are you comfortable with going? Have you ever vidded higher than you're comfortable with? If you're comfortable with NC-17, have you ever been shocked by finding that the vid you're making is G-rated instead?

I'm European, language and nudity don't really register as 'bad' and therefore don't warrant a higher rating. Naked skin wasn't even on my radar for this answer till obsessive24 mentioned it in hers. Violence on the other hand is and boy, do I like to vid dark things. Season 3 of SPN has a NC-17 (ab 18) rating in Germany and BtVS/AtS/TXF all come with a R-rating anyway, so viewers get what they seek for.

The whole question did take me aback, because I would go as high as NC-17, if the idea calls for this. Shockingly I never had a vid of mine push the rating because of sex, but plenty that I would consider at least R-ratings for violence. Xandra says it is because I'm a prude, which is untrue and therefore unacceptable. It just seems I use my quota of random one-night-stands, sex and mind fucking on her. So yeah, this means I have to remedy the softcore sex quota and vid QaF at some point in the near future.

Another point I would like to address in regards of ratings is intention. I'm generally drawn to dark characters and like to exploit their edges, so the second question got a big fat yes by going way back to a straight-forward example. 'Kinda I want to' has nothing more than a badly manipulated kiss between Angel and Wes, but the whole vid feels darker for me then the obvious PG-13 it probably deserves. With the implied blowjobs, bloodplay, ensuing torture and dub con, plus hospital visits. There are plenty of instances in my vids, that I find darkly funny with what they imply in fandom tropes and not necessarily canon. I know they go over the head of most viewers and that's exactly how I like it. The squirming feeling they probably sometimes get and can't precisely place, while watching my vids? Yeah, there is a (subjective) reason for it, 'Move' would be a prime example for this.

Day 12 – Have you ever attempted an "adaptation" vid of a favorite media source but set in a different fandom? (I.e., attempted to bring the 'feel' or 'mood' of one source to a different fandom, like the zombie Mary Poppins vid)

Mmh, I don't think so. Mood manipulation to make a source appear slightly different than it really is, doesn't count, right?