Project DIVA 2nd - 飴か夢 Candy Or Dreams by doriko ft Hatsune Miku

An original Project Diva 2nd edit of doriko's 飴か夢 / Ame Ka Yume / Candy Or Dreams

Edit Note: My first attempt at a Project Diva 2nd edit, and it shows... XD

"Candy Or Dreams" is included in doriko's masterful album "Romeo and Cinderella". It's a strong and almost melodramatic piece with some rather somber lyrics. When I first began creating the PSP edit, I had no clue of what the lyrics were saying. So I originally had Miku looking much more happy and doing more cheerful dance moves since the music is so energetic and uptempo. Mid way through the editing, I looked up the English lyrics only to find how much more serious the overall meaning and tone of the song seemed to be. This forced me to "tone down" the edit a little more. Of course, Miku still looks happy and cheerful (it's difficult to make her look sad given the limitations of the game editing software and such an upbeat tempo), just not as much as I originally intended. On the flip-side, getting a gist of the translation made me redesign most of the edit so as I could convey in visual a little more of what was being sung in audio.

Regarding the title:
I realize the main stream translation of the title is "Candy Or Dream", but that's based off a literal straight translation without regard to context. After double-checking the translation on my own and then trying to understand the lyrics a little more, I felt the better sounding English title would be to pluralize "Dream" to "Dreams". It would be that or "A Candy Or A Dream", but that sounds even more corny.

Regarding the English translation:
The English translation is not my own. I garnered it from postings on youtube and other web sites (few that there were). The English syllables are grammatically designed to be almost the same as the Japanese, meaning you are able to sing along in English. The drawback of "forcing" such syllabled correctness is having to add or remove certain words that may convey a better meaning in a direct contextual translation. So I can't speak for it's accuracy. But since I have no clue of the Japanese language and website translators aren't enough help to provide anything better, I have turned to the postings and efforts of others. So many thanks and all credit to the person or persons who have taken the time to piece this English translation together.

Regarding the video resolution:
The PSP pumps out a resolution of 480x272. This looks fine on a 4.3" display. But blown up to anything larger and pixelation becomes blindingly apparant. The video has been upscaled and converted to 1920x1080 but given the limitations of the original source, it's obviously not true HD. In fact, there isn't much difference between the 720p and 1080p versions. 480p is actually a bit more forgiving in that it's higher resolution (compared to the PSP) is still able to smooth out a lot of the sharp pixelation which comes as a result of upscaling. For viewing I would suggest using either 480p or 720p.

Software used:
Hatsune Miku Project Diva 2nd (English mod v2.8, translated by Einishi)
RemoteJoy v0.19 for PSP (stream PSP video to computer)
Fraps (capture PSP video on computer)
Sony Vegas v10 (edit video capture, English subtitles, final rendering)
Ulead Video Studio 11 Plus (main title, video filters)