About my AMV-editing life

Now I'm going to explain how and why I've started amv-editing. Perhamps it's not as important as what Napoleon did during his life, but at least it's interesting to know how other editors have started.

In November 2006, while I was looking for some cool videos to download from google video, I decided to look for a gohan vs cell episode; while surfing on all the results google showed me, I saw something strange called " gohan vs cell- one step closer" hosted on the website xanga. I got very curious so I watched: it was a very nice AMV done by one guy who later I would casually find on youtube, ACE9010; that AMV impressed me a lot, too bad I couldn't download it, so I looked for a broly vs goku one on the P2P net emule, because until then I had never seen that battle. After searching for a while I found one and I downloaded it: the song was one of my favourites, "bring me to life", and the video, now hosted on youtube, was simply awesome.
Seeing that I could find Dragon Ball videos online, I started downloading everything that was available on google video, and later on from youtube; although I used to watch amvs, I never thought about making one myself, so for some months I just kept watching them.
Later on, during the Easter holidays, I decided to look for dragon ball episodes: searching on google I found many websites but most of them were not free so I spent sometime searching; also, I just wanted to watch the episodes because I had missed some of the most important ones all the times I saw dragon ball and recorded it into VHS! After some time I found some cool websites and I started downloading the DBZ ones, starting with the kid buu saga, which was the one I missed the most in VHS: the episodes were hosted in the RM format, which offers good video and audio quality and, what's most important, occupies a lot less space than the AVI format. I spent many days downloading and watching, until one day, I saw again one of the best dragon ball amvs ever, the " The Fall Of A Tyrant" ( goku vs frieza) one, and I got the idea of making one amv of my own, so I opened windows movie maker and tried to import the RM episodes: you can't imagine how disappointed I got when I saw I couldn't do that!!!! But I really wanted to make my amv, therefore I looked for a video converter; at first I couldn't find the right one because all of them were to pay for and very few could convert RM files into wmm suitable formats, so I spent countless hours downloading and trying video converters for nothing... but then I saw the boilsoft RM converter and I downloaded the trial version. At first it behaved like all the other converters, but one tuesday, on April 24, for some strange reason ( perhamps a virus), it started converting the whole video without writing the hated " Unregistered Version" thingy!!! Man, I must say, I'd been very very lucky indeed: the virus corrupted the installation, so the converter behaved as if it was the Full Version!
Helped by luck, I converted the first episodes into the MPEG-1 format, and so I the day after I managed to do my first AMV: Gohan vs Cell- Metallica! I uploaded immediately after finishing it into an account I had created 1 month earlier, the Blackdragonthegreat one, and asked one youtube friend, TheEclipseproduction, to give me some feedback about it. He thought me how to split clips and the day after I made the reviewed version, which was, in my opinion, an incredible step forward in terms of synch and clips' choice.
I kept on making similar videos in terms of style ( effects, songs, etc...) and I improved a bit but not dramatically; one day ( wednesday) I made a goku vs cooler video with the song "in the end" by linkin park before going to karate, and the morning, before going to school I checked how it was going and noticed that it had scored more than 250 views in less than one day!
That made me feel more confident about my videos, so I continued making videos; on May 5, I had to go to the Italy Open ( Tennis championship), and because before going to it I was bored, I made a goku vs kid buu video with the song " Requiem for a tower", and when I came back from it I made a goku vs baby video with the song " In the end". The following morning, this one had scored 620 views, and the goku vs kid buu one had scored something like 300 views ( later on, the kid buu one would become my most viewed video, surpassing the other one by a lot of views, but this in the month of August).
On May 10, I got invited by busterbob143 to join the DBZero production: at the time he had one of his videos, goku vs cell- scatman, being watched by more than 10000 people per day, so being invited by him to join his group was a great honour for me, and I'll never stop thanking him for this ( right now I've been upgraded from normal to senior member together with ACE9010). The same day, I created a group for people who liked DBZ/GT very much, the Dragon Kings and started inviting more people to be my friends... Also, on September 28th I've founded the Italian AMV Corporation with the help of an italian friend, DarioUltrasNapoli, and I've been joining many awesome groups as well.
And so I continued making AMVs, until now. Another thing I improved since then is the quality of my videos: one day I saw the difference between a clip I had downloaded from Dragon Ball Arena and one of my recent AMVs, and I noticed how this one was better in terms of colour and aspect ratio and pixelation, so I started using these ones from then on ( September). Also, I've found out some useful programs which some beginners could find useful, such as sony vegas, virtual dub limewire, some websites, etc... I'll be hoting a list of these in another post, don't worry; as for myself, I prefer using sony vegas.