ofurotaimu | Nico Nico Douga Guide Index

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Nico Nico Douga Guide Index

This is what has been keeping me busy the past two weeks. It took me a long time to complete this, so many apologies. I actually wanted to finish these by Christmas but a lot of things were in the way.

Anyway, this is a list of guides on how to use Nico Nico Douga effectively, since you're all registered and ready to explore anyway. While this is a list of many guides, they do not encompass the whole of Nico Nico Douga and are only centered on three things: NND main, namahousou and community. For the rest, you're free to explore yourselves (Nico Nico apps are so time-consuming!).

I. Registering for a Nico Nico Douga account
- This is very basic, but I guess to save people time from googling, I've also made a guide for this.

II. Getting a Premium Account
- At this moment, a premium account is important so you can watch high-in-demand namahousou (ASK, Gero, clear, Asamakku, etc) as well as have privileges to buy tickets for live events and concerts.

III. Basics in Browsing Nicovideo
- How to search, how to arrange searches, what are those weird buttons under the video you're watching, how to mylist and share the video to friends, etc.

IV. Nico Nico Communities
- Understanding communities and their content, joining and using the community interface to the fulllest.

V. Nico Nico Namahousou
- How to watch a namahousou, how to timeshift, how to comment and understand why I see nice boats, etc. (updated!)

VI. Nico Nico Lingo
- What does 8888888 mean and how do I respond when I'm called KY and half of the words you see in a regular namahousou.

I hope that these would be of help and hopefully, I can add more to this later on. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment on any of the posts and I'll try to help!

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Thanks so much! It cleared up a lot of things I've wondered about, but never asked. Now to figure out the rest.... someone I will figure out how to become a shokunin and figure out those weird options on nico nama comment viewer...

oooh! so many guides~! XD thanks! otsukaresama! \o/

I get this annoying error when trying to watch nicovideos with an orange link directing me to some news thing, I usually have to reload the video multiple times in order to get it to work, there's also another error but without the link. Anyone know what these errors are?

Hello. Can you please make a guide to upload video too? Thank you.

Thank you SO much for this guide~!! It helps a lot. I am learning Japanese and I can read an occasional character..but that doesn't exactly help if I know 3 out of 4 in a word ^^'' Your guide is really helpful and I will definitely be making more trips back any time I get lost! I'm currently searching for a guide on uploading video. If you know anything or know someone who does it would help a lot~ Thanks! ^.^

Hi, I've been combing the internet for tutorials on uploading your own utattemitas on niconico and can't find any TT__TT and the Japanese guides are also kind of non-informative. There are a couple of things I want to find out--
1. How to ask permission to cover a song (piapro seems the best choice, but not sure if it's necessary. And it's so hard to search.)
2. How to ask people to mix and encode: Do you only do it after you're a bit recognized? Is there anyone in the business of mixing for n00bs?
3. Suggested free programs for encoding, or anything for that matter?

Thank you to any mods or even commenters who respond to this with any advice at all ♥

Heyhey =D
let me answer some of your questions!

1. The best way to ask permission to cover a song, is probably via mail?
Twitter and Piapro should work as well though, but in their mylist, user or community is often a contact mail!
But, if you download their Off-vocal files, it sometimes contains a ToG file which might state that you are not allowed to upload it e.g. outsid of nico nico douga, or tells you other information.

2. How to ask people: Well, as an english speaker it's probably the best to ask english speakers! Asking japanese mixers/encoders isnt as easy due to the language barrier and also, it's easier to ask them a favor if you know them/are friends with them.
For english speakers, roam around youtube and check the singers there.
Mixers and encoders are in most cases credited and contactable (via Youtube PM or twitter or other ways).
Someone who mixes for every "noob" doesn't exist.
But there are enough kind people who mix for others, though I am not sure concerning strangers. (Would you do ppl who you don't know a favor? Sry, don't want to appear rude! It's just a given imo)
Also they are all nice ppl, it doesnt hurt to get to know them! ;D
Also some of them wrote/uploaded several guides concerning mixing and encoding.

3. well, since you only want to mash up your video and your audio the Windows Movie Maker might already be enough at the beginning. Though I can't rly think of a good encoding tool that is free.
There are several free mixing programs though. Like Mixcraft or Garageband~~

I hope that helps you a bit o,o

1. As Himuro said, probably the best way to ask permission to cover a song is to e-mail the P or tweet them. There are some songs they don't permit to cover so watch out (or with specific rules not to upload to sites other than NND). Most likely if it's on piapro, it's free to use (b/c piapro is used as a collaboration site) but make sure to leave a comment saying you used it and link what you cover. For e-mails, producers usually leave their e-mail address in their mylist description or community/user profile along with a twitter username. Don't be shy about asking! Just make sure to read any fine print and you should be fine.

2. For mixing and encoding, I think if you don't have a working grasp/at least conversational grasp of Japanese, I'd avoid asking Japanese people for help with that. There are some technical terms and it might be troubling to them to try to work with someone who can't communicate what they want them. I recommend looking for English speakers who can mix or encode because then the language barrier isn't a problem :D Although it's always a good idea to try and mix/encode yourself first (at least you get an idea of how it works and how much effort a mixer/encoder would go through). The YouTube community has lots of singers/mixers so don't be afraid to learn from them, they're mostly a friendly group. Here's a simple mixing guide from YouTube Chorus Forms and here's another mixing guide by Lucy, an utaite on YT. The thing with encoding a video and uploading it to NND is that if you're a general member, the file has to be pretty small (so it needs certain encoding to maintain quality) because there's a limit. Premium members have unlimited file requirements so their files can be big and thus their encoding is also different.

If you find you can't do it alone, asking people doesn't hurt but remember that it's the same as asking a favor of anyone. Mixing/encoding takes a lot of effort so as long as you're polite and you ask nicely, try asking someone who has more experience. Be cooperative, if they don't have time or is not willing to do a favor for someone they don't know, don't be persistent and keep bothering them. Be friendly and courteous. In many cases, people request mixing and encoding from friends so don't be afraid to make some new friends. This is true even on the NND scene because people are often more comfortable asking for help from friends and as a result people are more willing to do things for a friend.

There may be some people willing to mix for "n00bs" but try to make an effort on your own part and learn how to do some of it too! Which brings me to

3. Free programs for mixing/recording : Audacity. For encoding, I believe AviUtl is popular.

Good luck and I hope this advice has helped! Just remember to always be polite and courteous :D

Edited 2012-07-22 14:31 (UTC)

Ah, himuro, seraphictune, thank you so, so, much! I should be fine with mixing, so I have no idea why I asked about that. Anyway, I've been looking around the credited encoders' mylists and sometimes they say like エンコ依頼はいつでもどうぞ。So I was thinking I would email them and see what happens; my Japanese isn't half bad.

I was wondering what is anyone's opinion on emailing utaite like nano or madoka for advice, since they natively speak English and it's easier to tell me if I'm doing something wrong.

Seraphictune, if I read your response correctly, if I am intend to cover something should I leave my gratitude on the piapro or email the producer or both, assuming that the song is on piapro?

Thank you so much for supplying your wisdom~ Sorry to worry so much.

Regarding Piapro, you only need to leave your gratitude via the piapro system as Tune mentioned, it's not necessary to email the producer in that case.

I don't recommend asking Nano or Madoka for advice since they'll probably busy and flooded with fanmail, so it's unlikely they'll fulfill your request. Even if they are bilingual. Maybe if you were their friend? There are plenty of English speakers who can do the same task. Encoding is kinda tricky because nico has strange standards. My friends use some sort of program for their Vocaloid uploads, but they're not online at the moment, I can try asking them later.

Just Tune is fine XD
If the encoder is open to requests it seems like it should be fine~ Good luck asking then!
If you want some more insight on encoding and have some handle on Japanese then I recommend kenji-san's blog on encoding. He's a well-known and also very active encoder but has specific standards/requirements for encoding. His blog covers a lot of points in general, so I recommend taking a look.

What kind of advice are you looking for? You can still try asking Ofuruotaimu :D we're very friendly! I don't recommend e-mailing super popular utaite like Nano or Madoka because they're probably very busy although I suppose it doesn't hurt to try? I've tweeted Madoka asking for some general advice with lyrics before and she's replied to me so you never know!

But as Stephie said I don't think there's a need to specifically seek out ~bilingual~ utaites, there are plenty of experienced English-speaking people who can help (this is where I highly recommend seeking out the YT community, they know English and they sing 歌ってみた, sounds like they know what they're doing, huh? :D)

Yup. I believe it's somewhere in the regulations of piapro too. You can just click the "I used it" button and leave a thank you for what you used and link to your final work. There's usually no need to e-mail the producer but if you do upload it, a lot of utaites do tweet a link of their work to the producer to let them know they covered it.

An example would be I used a picture from piapro for a cover of mine and I thanked the artist and left a link to my video. She actually found my twitter and thanked me for using her picture e///e...
(um...that usually probably won't happen though)

But good luck! If you have any other questions (uh...what were you going to try and ask Nano and Madoka anyways? o.o) feel free to ask us!

Thanks for the guide!

I took basic Japanese years ago and am recently revising when i started listening to utaite covers on YT.

Recently i found one utaite who is not really well-known (at least in terms of info available in English) and was looking to sign up to niconico to listen to more of his stuff so this helps tons!

Ps. Maybe you guys can direct me to where there is more info on him? His name is "rabipo (らびぽ)" and i fell in love with his raw voice and energy on Macaron - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXDYY1oz-bo

I'm not too familiar with Rabipo, but here some links I got.

His NicoNico Mylist: http://www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/34312400
His Nicopedia article (basically niconico wikipedia): http://dic.nicovideo.jp/a/%E3%82%89%E3%81%B3%E3%81%BD
His Nico Community: http://com.nicovideo.jp/community/co1307873
His Twitter account: https://twitter.com/rabipo

His Nicopedia article contains links to several of his other mylists, which include his collaborations with other people. It also has information and links to his blog, etc.

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