How good is good enough for conventions?

mandisaw · Post by **mandisaw** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 1:19 pm

So I'm facing my first con submission, and the contest guidelines are all clear on technical format. However, I'm having trouble coming up with a sense of how polished the final product ought to be, as far as encoding bitrate / file size and minor artifacts.

I could keep tweaking it right up to the deadline, but you reach the point of diminished returns. This is sort of a subjective question, but to contest organizers and participants alike, how good is good enough?

AquaSky · Post by **AquaSky** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 1:30 pm

If you're talking visual quality, I'd say : no macroblocking, no DivX logo (or other logos, for that matter), no subtitles, and no interlacing. That just about covers all the major visual issues I've seen at conventions. As far as filesize and bitrate go, make it as high-quality as possible. A VBR MPEG-2 set for 100% quality should do nicely. After all, the only limit is your upload speed (if you're submitting via FTP) or the capacity of the media you're sending it on (and even CD-Rs can hold up to 700mb). You'll have to worry about reasonable filesize when it comes to distribution, but not so much for convention showings.

Scintilla · Post by **Scintilla** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 2:23 pm

IcyCloud wrote:If you're talking visual quality, I'd say : no macroblocking, no DivX logo (or other logos, for that matter), no subtitles, and <b>no interlacing.</b>

Depending on the con, I would modify this to say "either no interlacing or proper field order". Many conventions accept interlaced MPEG-2s and play the videos back on hardware that's perfectly capable of properly displaying interlaced material... IF you specify the proper field order. If you get it wrong, there'll be artifacting all over and the staff will have to try to fix it.

Tormentor · Post by **Tormentor** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 2:49 pm

Scintilla wrote: Depending on the con.

yep, i see it like this as well. I participated on last years connichi-con with my first video. Okay in the great presentation-hall, there were just videos looking quite good (like mine

). But after the contest during the best of the rest one saw videos one would have deleted directly instead of sending them to the con. There was one video with a broken video-line, so one saw some flickering and heard the song.

I would say good enough for cons is what you think is good enough, as long as you are satisfied with your video there is no reason for not sending it to a con.

mandisaw · Post by **mandisaw** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 3:06 pm

IcyCloud wrote:If you're talking visual quality, I'd say : no macroblocking, no DivX logo (or other logos, for that matter), no subtitles, and no interlacing.

No, there's nothing glaring like that, just maybe 3 or 4 shots where I see some rainbowing and a couple of my fade-to-white transitions have a "ghost frame" that's pixellated (i.e. it seems to show up on playback, but I can't spot a glitchy frame on the timeline). I notice them and they irk me, but I've been studying my video intently. What I can't figure out is if this is stuff that a viewer or judge would notice and be bothered by.

A VBR MPEG-2 set for 100% quality should do nicely.

Hmm, well I've done an encode at about 5Mbps (DVD-standard) and it looks very nice except for those things mentioned above (to me, on my editing machine - I'll see how it looks elsewhere to others). I'm a little tempted to go back and max out the quality on my source clips, but that would mean doing some re-editing, and I'm afraid of (a) screwing up the synch that I've already achieved and (b) getting the same glitches, but in a shinier overall video. *grin*

ngsilver · Post by **ngsilver** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 4:36 pm

mandisaw wrote:No, there's nothing glaring like that, just maybe 3 or 4 shots where I see some rainbowing and a couple of my fade-to-white transitions have a "ghost frame" that's pixellated (i.e. it seems to show up on playback, but I can't spot a glitchy frame on the timeline). I notice them and they irk me, but I've been studying my video intently. What I can't figure out is if this is stuff that a viewer or judge would notice and be bothered by.

Well, it really depends on how long these glitches last for. If they only last for a frame, I doubt many judges would pick up on it after only seeing the video 1-3 times, and atendees wouldn't notice it at all. Typically, small errors are hard to pick up unless you view the video multiple times and are actually looking for them. But again, like most have said, it really depends on if you are satisfied with the current quality or not.

I'm a little tempted to go back and max out the quality on my source clips, but that would mean doing some re-editing, and I'm afraid of (a) screwing up the synch that I've already achieved and (b) getting the same glitches, but in a shinier overall video. *grin*

I've done that to a few videos. And yeah, it can happen. If the timecode of the video changes at all, or the length, due to changing the souce quality then your timeline will be off. I've found that after increasing quality by tweeking my AVS scripts that most of the time it only gets thrown off by a few frames, but that also means I have to go through each clip and alter it by a few frames. Which can get tiresome, but the added quality is always apprecieated.

Again, it's all based on how you feel about the video and encode.

Illia Sadri · Post by **Illia Sadri** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 6:17 pm

From what you are describing it would not really affect the showing as the problems you are encountering sometimes do occur in the encodes. Rainbows are actually something that many early anime dvd's had. There are filters in virtualdub to assist that but in all honesty to the typical viewer and a judge who is watching the video once it will not be noticed.

The ghosting if it is relatively minor and only occurs for a couple frames will also probably go entirely unnoticed.

Contests get a wide range of quality from looks as good as (or better in some cases) than the dvd to which character is that?

If you are happy with the video, submit it to a couple and see how you do. It can't hurt since the most you end up paying for is postage (and often not even that if the contest offers ftp like many do.)

mandisaw · Post by **mandisaw** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 11:11 pm

Er, I've had a rude awakening after checking out my vid on a higher-end system. The problems are worse than I thought, and a fair amount of it seems to stem from the original source. (Did I mention that this is an Escaflowne video? *sigh*) I'll try filtering the hell out of it, but I don't think I'll use this for my con debut. Thanks for the advice, though.

Oh yeah, is there a list anywhere of series to be wary of, as far as the quality of the source goes? I figured that older series might generally be tricky, but I didn't expect this much glitchiness.

badmartialarts · Post by **badmartialarts** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 11:45 pm

Escaflowne is a bit rainbowy, but if you want truly beautiful rainbows with leprechauns dancing at the base of them and Heimdall at the top guarding the way to Valhalla, you need Armitage III: Dual Matrix. Great film, horrible rainbowing.

Illia Sadri · Post by **Illia Sadri** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 2:19 am

mandisaw wrote:Er, I've had a rude awakening after checking out my vid on a higher-end system. The problems are worse than I thought, and a fair amount of it seems to stem from the original source. (Did I mention that this is an Escaflowne video? *sigh*) I'll try filtering the hell out of it, but I don't think I'll use this for my con debut. Thanks for the advice, though.

Oh yeah, is there a list anywhere of series to be wary of, as far as the quality of the source goes? I figured that older series might generally be tricky, but I didn't expect this much glitchiness.

Remmeber that many contests now are burned to a dvd and played from that and it should be 720*480 resolution. A high end system may use 1024, 1280 or 1600 resolution monitors.

I am familiar with the Esceflowne dvd's and they should be fine for a convention submission. The biggest problem really is in the rainbows which become much more prevalent at high resolutions as opposed to low resolutions.

As far as for the future, you should make videos with sources you like. Most anime dvd's over the past few years are pretty decent but there are some that have not gotten on the ball yet. BUt it is a title by title. If you love the show enough though, do a video and submit to your local con.

I will tell you over based on a few years of experience..... if you used dvd footage you are in the top third of the submissions many contests get. I often end up having to run submissions in virtualdub and resize or filter a submission done terribly. If I see someone submit mpeg2 format and I can tell they were editing from dvd's, I get very happy.