Canceling Donkey Punch charge in air

So I'm having trouble with this. I want to be able to do crazy short hop donkey punch charge cancels and charge cancels to edge hog, but it doesn't work half the time. Sometimes it cancels just fine using the shield button and DK just stops charging and continues falling. But the rest of the time I cancel it, DK does an air dodge for no reason. I can't figure out what triggers an air dodge sometimes and not others. I've tried pressing L quick, holding it longer, pressing it twice, easing up on L slower, but nothing is consistent. I think it's just random! Which would suck, cause when I want to giant punch charge cancel to edge hog, he air dodges, misses the edge and can't recover.
Has anyone figured this out or I am I hitting the wrong button or what?

This happens to me quite a lot since I only charge it after I respawn and after I'm hit far into the air and not even I can control it.

Kyle will confirm that I die sometimes cause of it

Ok. I figured it out.

It's because of the buffered input.

You actually can't cancel it instantly at anytime. Every windup that he does has an animation(ten windups for full charge), and when you press L(R or Z) to cancel it, it has to finish the animation first before it actually cancels the charge.

In brawl in general, there is an input buffer that allows you to chain moves together alot easier than you would normally if you had to wait till the end of every move's animation to input the next command. There are buffer frames during like the last 5 frames of every move where it can take the next command.

Anywayz, each wind up during the donkey punch charge is like 9 or 10 frames long. So if you cancel it during the second half of a windup "whuff" it will take L as buffered input for the next command and you'll do an airdodge.

Conclusion: Canceling the charge without airdodging can be done consistently by tapping L right when you hear one of the "whuffs" or immediately after one of the whuffs. It's pretty hard to master though, especially since the 10 frame whuffs contrast in speed to all his other SLOWWW animations and it requires fox-like reflexes.

Good job explaining this Rak. I was going to talk about the buffer system, I also have found that certain moves give people problems. for example DK's Windup cancels or stopping downB on the exact slap you want to. Jaison seem to get hit out of the moves and Ganon's downB comes out often b/c of button buffering and him DI's on the Bstick.

And yes Ripple KO"s like this often, even during the most intense sweet matches... I did it also with upB stalling. It's funny to see my descend while charging a Donky Punch for no reason.

I was wondering about that myself. Thanks for the info Rak.

Yea, thanks Rak, this helps out alot, ive been meaning to post a question regarding this topic. Ive died countless times because of this.

Yeah i was wondering why this happened.

That really clears things up...unfortunately I don't have the fox-like reflexes to make it work

same ^

just gotta charged it up and stop it high enough, so that even if it does dodge, ill make it back

I think you guys are making this out to be a lot more difficult than it really is. I find the timing to be fairly forgiving. Just keep in mind how many windups you want to do, and make sure you hit R right after you hear the sound. *shrug* if I'm paying attention I almost never screw it up. You can easily ledgehop two windups, cancel, and auto-grab the ledge again, it's pretty cool.

yes, you can, but there is times where its crucial and youll mess it up and die

Yes, you might mess it up. All I'm saying is that I can sit and ledgehope-double windup-cancel-grab edge 50 times in a row easily without messing up in practice mode. Under the pressure of a match I might mess up more, but, well. This is not random, there IS a consistent timing for it, and it is in my opinion fairly forgiving if you know what you're doing. Practice more.