AMV vs MAD
 

Does anyone actually like AMVs? I find many of them to be annoying (especially since 90% of them use Linkin Park or System of a Down) and not very entertaining. Most of them just take a 3 minute scene or splice together a few number of scenes and put the music over it. Oh and all the random effects they throw in.

What's especially annoying is when I'm trying to find a specific fight scene or something and the top 10 results are AMVs or the user thought it'd be a good idea to overwrite the original audio with their crappy music.

MADs on the other hand I find like 90% of them to be very entertaining or funny and creative. You can tell that a lot of effort was put into the making of it and the results show.

I'm not sure if this is true but I think it's mostly the west that makes AMVs and little to none MADs.

I refuse to make this distinction.

Any video with music is a "music video". If you include "anime", then it is an "anime music video". If you compare some of the best AMVs vs the best MADs, you don't really see much of a difference. Hell, you can throw in a MAD into an AMV contest, and it'll be the best video that wins.

Any person in this world with audio and video editing capability can take any music with any video and make some kind of music video. And it doesn't matter where this person is from.

For both AMVs and MADs, I apply the 95% rule -- where 95% of them suck. :p (And I'm being generous by not pushing to 99%). ;):p

And these aren't even AMVs. They're garbage. Kekekekeke

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EDIT: I extended this discussion here:
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/foru...ba2960c89f9bfb

most are terrible and very poorly put together

What you have to remember is that you don't get to see the majority of MADs posted on japanese sites,only the best get chosen and reposted on english speaking websites.

This is pretty much my thoughts too

Well, ok, I'll tell you why you are seeing such different quality for AMVs and MADs;

>The best quality AMVs rarely get uploaded on YouTube. There are some, of course, but you'll have to look for it.

>On that same note, the MADs you looked at were probably the best of the best brought over by viewers to YouTube because they were so good.

It does sound like you only watched AMVs and MADs on YouTube, which is not an reliable indicator of which is better.

Anyways, as with everything...90% is shit. That goes for both forms.

I prefer Abridged Series.

While I possess the same general sentiment as Kyuu, I can't deny that you have a point. AMVs are made by splicing up what's already there, which is by definition more limited and constricted than MADs which are limited only by the ability of the user. A really well done MAD is probably going to appear a lot more impressive (and take a lot more work) than a really well done AMV simply because it takes actually creating something and not just godly editing.

As Kyuu said MAD and AMVs are the same thing,they don't have there set of rules

This is an AMV that does more than randomly put clips together

Well, there are a couple of ways to go about it. I already said that generally, I agree with Kyuu's approach (and follow it instinctively). Animated Music Videos don't sound limited to slapping random clips together to me either. And in effect, I don't see why it would be different from a MAD. But the popular use of terms dictates them as different and I don't see a reason to be stubborn and not comply if it facilitates communication. The purpose of language, or rather, taxonomy, isn't to be correct or efficient but to let people reach a common set of knowledge as quickly and as easily as possible. If using MADs to describe a certain sort of videos helps me grab the attention of a lot of people who call them MADs and consider them different from AMVs, I will call them MAD and treat them as different from AMVs. It's a superficial distinction and an incorrect one but it doesn't really matter. I just categorize videos as they label themselves.

I find that about 90% of everything is crap... so rather than prefer AMV vs MAD - I tend to have good examples of each in my library.

The problem you have is suddenly with that distinction a lot of AMV contest winners wouldn't be AMVs

Not to mention that a lot of Sakuga MADs that just put random nicely animated scenes together and put some music in the backround would I guess be called AMVs going by your distinction.

But as far as I can tell, even those that wish to uphold that distinction respect what a video calls itself.

Then are they really upholding a distinction if they're just fine with people labeling a video what they want?

How they see a particular specimen has little to no effect on the taxonomical division that lets people infer the common characteristics of whatever category is brought up.

What is the difference?

I always thought that AMV's and MAD's were the same things (ie. edited anime with music), just that they were called differently because the acronym is different in japan or something :D

For MAD's (and AMV's, for that matter), if by "like 90% of them to be very entertaining or funny and creative" you mean extremely well made, then I agree with you. But having all those things in an AMV/MAD doesn't mean they'll give me the one thing I'm looking for when i watch them: entertainment.

I think that the link to the AMV totoum gave is a prime example of something well made and creative, but boring. Sorry to say it, but i was simply unentertained while watching that. I can acknowledge they skills of whoever made it, and how the effects and such are well done, but i did not enjoy watching that. AMV's/MAD's to me are like movie's and TV shows to me; not distinguished by good or bad but by entertainment value.

Also, with the made up "90% are good/bad" statistic, I'm sure that affecting us because we don't live in japan. There's probably just as many bad MAD's in Japan as there are here, and only the super good ones (yes, most likely with the use of a lot more effects and home made animation than the others) make it through to here, because who would bother uploading some crappy one?

Another thing is the music. I'm inclined to believe that you will enjoy the AMV/MAD more if you like the music better. Which means that anything using a foreign language will probably sound better because we don't understand the lyrics, and we focus on the actual music instead.

So, just enjoy the AMV's/MAD's/whatever you want to call them's you enjoy. I don't see why people have to make such a huge distinction and why it affects overall impression and entertainment value.

I was always under the impression that MADs were made by Japanese fans and AMVs by non-Japanese fans and in that sense I don't see how one is better than the other.

I've seen great & horrible ones from both categories. Totoum is right if you are only judging MADs by what is uploaded on YouTube that is not a good indicator of quality bc only the best tend to be uploaded. Now try searching for MADs on Nico Nico, then you will see some that compete with the very worst AMVs on YT.

That's the reality of it, yeah. Some people might like to think there's an actual technical difference between the two, but there's none. If you see the best so called MADs and compare them to the best AMVs, you'll see that both are After Effects composites made by people who are highly skilled with this program or other similar ones. That's all there is to it.

I feel like the issue with MADs and AMVs on youtube is that the quality ones gets taken down because of "copyright" while the lesser quality ones stay there.

Actually, I believe the definition of MAD is rather broader than AMV. Western viewers probably aren't as familiar with the non-AMV-like MADs because it's hard to appreciate a parody-dialogue MAD without a translation.

Straight from NicoNicoPedia:
Source: http://dic.nicovideo.jp/a/mad

"MAD refers to video and/or audio created by editing and rearranging existing video or audio, to give it new meaning. In short, derivative [fan] creations."

Practically speaking, MADs involving music tend to be the most common/popular, but it can technically encompass many other kinds of videos (as mentioned, this includes dialogue parodies, e.g. cutting in audio from other anime or rearranging the audio to change characters' personalities). A MAD doesn't even need to made from anime footage.

Nico denizens' take on the difference can be read here. The main points are more or less:

• Country of origin.
• Anonymity, interestingly enough (MAD creators don't usually credit themselves, while AMV creators are more likely to include their names in the video).
• Broadness of definition (MAD can include audio-only and non-anime).
• Rarer for MADs to use more than one anime.
• More common for AMV creators to work in groups.
• Neta*.

Of course you get videos like the famous Candy Pop, which you'll notice is tagged both "MAD" and "AMV".

Uh, anyway, there was no real point to this post other than to be (hopefully) informative. Carry on.


*This word is so hard to explain I won't even try. As the NicoNicoPedia article states, "Neta is a word that everyone knows, but when asked 'what does it mean?' nobody seems to know the answer."

Postscript: Apparently the term "MAD" comes from "MAD tapes" from the 80s~90s, which were cassette tapes that had audio (from news programs and whatnot) spliced together to create something just a little insane.