Making CH videos is hard

[3xTripleXXX]

Just a little frustrated, since I was mixing down the music set for my next CH, and it was all going great until I managed to flub the transition on the very last pair of songs, so that was almost 40 minutes down the drain. I mix my songs continuously with DJ’ing software, so it’s all done live and with overlapping beats and such. I’ll give it another go tomorrow. :)

So anyway, with all the creators here, I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s had some pretty frustrating moments while building a CH. What are your most frustrating ones? :)

[Liquid]

Most frustrating one?

When I can't find the right bpm for a song. Just a single off-beat can ruin an entire round so making sure the overlayed beats fit 100% was always the first thing I did. Sometimes I just had to give up on certain songs because I noticed waaay too late that the song I picked sped up just a tiny bit in the middle of the song. That's probably the reason why so many CH/PMVs used electronic music - they usually don't try anything fancy, have a constant bpm and have clearly audible beats.

[Pseudonym]

Putting hours and hours into making one round - then realizing it sucks and never using it in the final video. That happens a lot to me.

Other than that very frustrating part about making CH videos for me is all the non-creative stuff that needs to be done when your video is about 90% finished. Copying text lines to the video, adding fading visual beat meter, adding beat change indicators, countless re-renders to make sure everything looks good and so on... I just need to force myself through this phase every time.

And lastly the most frustrating part is every time I'm forced to open AE to make visual beat meter.
God, how I hate that software...

[pl3b]

To me the most frustrating part when I need to re-render the whole thing because I notice one single mistake. For me it takes few hours to render whole CH, so that's pretty much +1 day.

As for the music, I don't really have too many problems lining up the beats and mixing the songs but as already noticed, I do pick music that has clear audible beat track which is steady. The main reason for that however is that I find it less distracting for "players". I tend to focus on the visual side of things - put emphasis on the videos without adding too many visual effects. The music and the beats are there in the background, but are not the main thing.

[Mr123]

I really hate everything related with producing and implementig the beats and instructions.
The beatmeter-generator doesn‘t run onmy mac, I don‘t have any AE-Skills, so I have to use the
Final-Cut-Title-Tool, which is everything but user-friendly.

I use a metronome-app to make the beats and edit music and beats BEFORE I start editing the Video.
This makes it al little bit easier, but I would kill for a user-friendly beatmeter-generator for IOS/Mac. It would take my production-process to the next level.

Realizing you made a spelling mistake (english is not my native language) when you‘re already uploading (happend with Zart/Hart).
I didn‘t correct it - and I hate it.

Another thing I really don’t like is shitty footage and bad camera-work.
You sit there for hours to edit a round, just to realize that the footage you collected is not long enough and you cannot do the round the way you had it in mind. I would love to have the chance to shoot my own CH-footage.

And I smoke way too much weed when creating CHs, but it‘s the special fuel that gets my mind in that special „I don’t care“-state to beeing able to work with that „special“ content.

All in all I love doing CH-Videos and I think these „problems“ are part of the art.

[pl3b]

I really hate everything related with producing and implementig the beats and instructions.
The beatmeter-generator doesn‘t run onmy mac, I don‘t have any AE-Skills, so I have to use the
Final-Cut-Title-Tool, which is everything but user-friendly.

As for AE - you could still use the BPM Tool I've made (search for the topic here on forums) just to export the beat meter as a video, then import it to the program of your liking and remove the background with a color key. That's exactly the way we did it in the Softcore Collaboration CH released a while ago. People sent me their music and beats audio, I've sent back the beat meters. Someone else put it all together and I'm pretty sure it wasn't done in AE. As for making the beats themselves - use whatever makes it easiest for you. Personally I use ableton live suite. I can help you with that one if making the beat audio or aligning the beats is a problem for you.

[barebone123]

I really hate everything related with producing and implementig the beats and instructions.
The beatmeter-generator doesn‘t run onmy mac, I don‘t have any AE-Skills, so I have to use the
Final-Cut-Title-Tool, which is everything but user-friendly.

As for AE - you could still use the BPM Tool I've made (search for the topic here on forums) just to export the beat meter as a video, then import it to the program of your liking and remove the background with a color key. That's exactly the way we did it in the Softcore Collaboration CH released a while ago. People sent me their music and beats audio, I've sent back the beat meters. Someone else put it all together and I'm pretty sure it wasn't done in AE. As for making the beats themselves - use whatever makes it easiest for you. Personally I use ableton live suite. I can help you with that one if making the beat audio or aligning the beats is a problem for you.

I actually enjoy making beats, choosing music, aligning all of it with what I think is a compelling rhythm that is synced to the music. I wholeheartedly recommend pl3b's script for Adobe AE. It is awesome and makes a really professional product. I haven't released a video with it yet, but have plenty of rounds that I've dabbled with using it. So much nicer than the old waveform.

bb

[barebone123]

I really hate everything related with producing and implementig the beats and instructions.
The beatmeter-generator doesn‘t run onmy mac, I don‘t have any AE-Skills, so I have to use the
Final-Cut-Title-Tool, which is everything but user-friendly.

As for AE - you could still use the BPM Tool I've made (search for the topic here on forums) just to export the beat meter as a video, then import it to the program of your liking and remove the background with a color key. That's exactly the way we did it in the Softcore Collaboration CH released a while ago. People sent me their music and beats audio, I've sent back the beat meters. Someone else put it all together and I'm pretty sure it wasn't done in AE. As for making the beats themselves - use whatever makes it easiest for you. Personally I use ableton live suite. I can help you with that one if making the beat audio or aligning the beats is a problem for you.

I actually enjoy making beats, choosing music, aligning all of it with what I think is a compelling rhythm that is synced to the music. I wholeheartedly recommend pl3b's script for Adobe AE. It is awesome and makes a really professional product. I haven't released a video with it yet, but have plenty of rounds that I've dabbled with using it. So much nicer than the old waveform.

I agree on songs and video though...spending weeks, or sometimes months on music selection and then realizing it really just doesn't work is a huge frustrating time sink.

And annoying video editor bugs. That don't manifest themselves until you're 95% done and then an entire clip with beat andio and meters get thrown out of whack (by even a fraction of a second screws the whole video up.)

bb

[Mr123]

I really hate everything related with producing and implementig the beats and instructions.
The beatmeter-generator doesn‘t run onmy mac, I don‘t have any AE-Skills, so I have to use the
Final-Cut-Title-Tool, which is everything but user-friendly.

As for AE - you could still use the BPM Tool I've made (search for the topic here on forums) just to export the beat meter as a video, then import it to the program of your liking and remove the background with a color key. That's exactly the way we did it in the Softcore Collaboration CH released a while ago. People sent me their music and beats audio, I've sent back the beat meters. Someone else put it all together and I'm pretty sure it wasn't done in AE. As for making the beats themselves - use whatever makes it easiest for you. Personally I use ableton live suite. I can help you with that one if making the beat audio or aligning the beats is a problem for you.

The problem is that I‘ve neither worked with AE in the past - nor do I have it on my machine for learning it by myself.
Whenever producing a CH (and facing beatmeter-issues) I say to myself: fuck it, I make this clip for me and nobody but myself, I don‘t need a beatmeter. Although I‘m sure it could take the vids to the next level.

[Required]

I remember the time I had to make a round from scratch, after overwriting on it by mistake.

Also, some songs (they use to be rock songs) are really inconsistent with their beats, and is really hard to create a beat track for them. And some videos are so big you can't edit them in a fluid way.

Or that moments when you have to find motivation to continue the process. Those moments when you think "I'm going to erase the whole thing, and forget about it, then I'll be free". That's hard.

But for me, the most frustrating thing is when you finish editing a round, and when you put together all the scenes, realize that the round doesn't fit in the compilation, and it's better if you take it out.

That means a lot of time and effort wasted on a round that is not that great as you expected.

Jeez, you can't imagine how much I want to finish that fucking 5th Island. And then I'll be free.

[Required]

Another thing I really don’t like is shitty footage and bad camera-work.
You sit there for hours to edit a round, just to realize that the footage you collected is not long enough and you cannot do the round the way you had it in mind. I would love to have the chance to shoot my own CH-footage.

Totally agree.

Hate when the camera shakes, or when the girls makes a silly face, moves weird or blink too much...

[fragrantEmulsion]

That's exactly the way we did it in the Softcore Collaboration CH released a while ago. People sent me their music and beats audio, I've sent back the beat meters.

The collaboration project, from announcement to release was finished relatively quickly and I think that this model could be used to create better content faster in the future. It would be beneficial for us to specialize into different roles, though I understand the urge to have creative control over everything about a production.

I wouldn't mind editing text for people as it seems there's a fair bit of broken English, though it's practically a CH trope at this point. A creator could supply me with a .txt of the lines in their video and I would gladly check them for grammar/clarity/spelling.

I also really enjoy overlaying beats to music and deciding on a pattern that is fun and fits the music. But it is extremely frustrating when the song is supposed to be 115 bpm and it is detected to be 115.80776 bpm and neither are actually correct. I think the reason this happens is related to compression over several downloads/uploads of content, but I'm only guessing.

And I smoke way too much weed when creating CHs, but it‘s the special fuel that gets my mind in that special „I don’t care“-state to beeing able to work with that „special“ content.

I smoke way too much weed when watching CH, I use it as a sort of "penalty" for messing up (like when I have to stop myself early because I'm about to cum) I take a weed break and come back to restart the round and it's usually even more difficult after that.

[3xTripleXXX]

God yeah, finding footage that you think will be good and then when you go through it after, you’re like, that’s terrible, is well, terrible.

@pl3b Getting beats to match up is easy enough, but I started the mix on the wrong octet, and since I live mix the music, that meant starting over. It’s all part of the practice to get better at mixing, I guess. :) Or maybe better about writing notes to myself so I remember the right moments to come in with the next song on. Also, I’m intending to do a “Simple Beats” version of my next CH so viewers have a choice between the more gamified quick changes that I like to do and a more “eyes on the porn because I don’t have to worry about the beat changes” version that might be more to your liking. ;)

I’m considering fiddling with AE and making a “Earn Your Release” style edging version too, but we’ll see how ambitious I get. :) Basically same video with three types of beats/instructions so that players can choose their preferred style. Or play all three. :D

[3xTripleXXX]

In other news, nailed the mix tonight. Beatmeters next. :)

[Caius Prepus]

You really like the song, it fits the theme, but the song gives you nothing to work with, no up, no down, no bass drop, no critical joncture or any transition that lead to a coup de theatre, or the lirycs doesn't match the vibe... a good round is story like, you get to match the vibe of the music with the vibe of the visual content, it has to start somewhere and get better and better. Songs that also follow that pattern are hard to find.

Following the beat... with image. Getting the good cuts with tempo is a lot of work. It is not mandatory, but it leads to next point...

Fapping material or artistic material. At one point you realise you could have done a Music Video for a song without any porn in it. The more I work on material, the less I care about arousal, but I care much more about the artistic design of it. The theme, the cuts, the intensity, the transition, etc. And then it starts to be long to produce, and you want to get a certain level of quality...

Getting the same level of quality for all the rounds... tought man... tought.

All the tedious stuff, beatmeter render, indication of all sorts, spelling errors... etc.