TheAX AMV Contest 2009 Finalists are...

[Rider4Z]

Oh boy, here i go!~
I will explain for you.
Before anything you need to realize a couple things.
- Computer monitors have very definitive SQUARE pixels. If you draw a square in photoshop, 200px by 200px, you WILL see a square on your screen. If your LCD monitor has a stuck pixel, it looks like a small square. All images displayed from a computer are square pixels.
- Your first picture is 848x480 (sPAR)
- Your second picture is 640x480
- Your third picture is 720x480

Your first picture is correct, how it looks and how you handled it, it looks is correct. This is in Square Pixel Aspect Ratio, (sPAR)

Your second picture, is correct as well, but in reality it is NOT 720x480. it is actually 640x480 sPAR. With 4:3 flag, it forces your Pixel Aspect Ratio to (0.9). Which is why it seems correct.

Your third image is truly 720x480 sPAR. But since you have no 4:3 flag, the number of pixels you added addBorders() is incorrect for 720x480 non-4:3 flagged video.

i admit i'm a dunce when it comes to all this stuff but this does explain a little bit for me. the only reason i've survived this long is because of eyeballing and trial and error when exporting. it's an adventure for me every video! XD

[milkmandan]

Oh, thanks very much for your explanation! I knew some of it already, but that helps clear a few things up. What I don't understand though is if the requirement for a con is to resize anamorphic footage to 720x480 and I want to send a Huffy that looks correct, how would I handle that? And what would the script look like if it wasn't anamorphic? Anyone know? I've read about PAR, DAR and aspect ratios etc. before but my mind goes klghjkhgkdfghjkdfgh when I try to comprehend it all at once, lol.

(Sorry all, I should start asking all this on the Avisynth forum soon instead of crowding this thread. I have a feeling I'll be going there soon. )

Well even i am not sure about that for con.

I usually submit in the following format.
720x480 SQUARE PIXEL aspect ratio.
24fps, progressive
I have added black borders for widescreen, if my source was widescreen.

=-==
The amv rules did not stipulate what PAR was suggested for submission, so I just stuck with Square Pixels.
What you See is What you Get..ftw

I don't know why anyone would edit in 0.9 anyways. :\
if you add photoshop images you gotta compensate for the 0.9 pixel aspect ratio.

[Vlad G Pohnert]

For all the contests I do, I run them from either DVDs or Netstream Mpeg decoder cards, I just find it all easier to just make it 720x480 (0.9 aspect ratio)... Hence anything in 16:9 gets letterboxed into 720x480 at least for now until cons can actually afford to have proper HD projectors (most cons still cry about having to get larger NTSC projectors )..

After that going to 720p to 480p upscaled to 1080p would be the way I would go (actually my HD projector and upscaler box does a reasonable job on my home theater as I've tested various video resolutions through it already...)

I assume the same for other contests (NTSC) so I do the same for my submissions.

Vlad

[Melichan923]

For all the contests I do, I run them from either DVDs or Netstream Mpeg decoder cards, I just find it all easier to just make it 720x480 (0.9 aspect ratio)... Hence anything in 16:9 gets letterboxed into 720x480 at least for now until cons can actually afford to have proper HD projectors (most cons still cry about having to get larger NTSC projectors )..

After that going to 720p to 480p upscaled to 1080p would be the way I would go (actually my HD projector and upscaler box does a reasonable job on my home theater as I've tested various video resolutions through it already...)

I assume the same for other contests (NTSC) so I do the same for my submissions.

Vlad

I remember that one con I sent to before, I forget which one, asked in the rules for all 16:9 footage, whatever the format, to be letterboxed ahead of time because sometimes they don't catch that it's 16:9 and it gets screened in the correct AR. I've done it the above way ever since. But just using a simple "LanczosResize(720x480)" even for 16:9 footage like you recommend would sure make things easy, Vlad! I think I might do it that way from now on and just make a tiny note of it in the title of the video or something.

[Scintilla]

Since the contest demanded "NTSC Standard of 720 by 480 pixels resolution", etc., I kind of assumed that any video files submitted at that resolution but in a format that didn't support aspect ratio flags, e.g. a HuffYUV AVI, would simply be recompressed to MPEG-2 for either playback from a decoder card or burning to a playable DVD, without bothering to resize.
If such was the case, then you'd want to use the same script no matter what format you were submitting in (resize to 720x352 and letterbox it up).

Of course, only the contest coordinator would know whether this is the case or not.

@milkmandan: changing the amount of borders added with AddBorders() would not help; the video itself would still be stretched. If you needed letterboxed video at square pixels for some reason, you'd want to resize to 640x352 first and then letterbox to 640x480.

[Ryvannis]

Also s0ma were you a judge? I'm assuming so from the comments that you made so far about my entries, and I'm also assuming that you were the final push for Monsoon.

Nope, not a judge . Just a regular editor~

I've actually just been keeping up with the videos you've been making and posting on the .org. And I can't speak for the judges (since I'm not one ) but since you've made it this far, I'm sure some of the judges have seen some of the things that I've been echoing about your video. Too much confidence can be a bad thing, but a little faith in your work can't hurt

Oh well at least I know now. I didn't know people actually kept a eye out on my vids.
Also I reuploaded the smaller sized HD version of Moonsoon, maybe you can change your opinion a bit there.

I was really worried about the bad frames, that's the last time I trust you Adobe. <_<

We're both using Adobe CS4, i really doubt bad frames is caused by adobe. :\

The AMV was down-converted from a 720P HD source, editing enough was bitch let alone wait 8-10 hours to get it encoded. Adobe couldn't fixate on doing a proper aspect ratio, and add scripting on top. It was a mess.

[XStylus]

Okay. Just watched your video. I think I may have been a bit too harsh and I'd raise your tech score up to four if I could, though one extra point from just one judge probably wouldn't make a world of difference in the grand scale of things (and Michael, if the results were that close that it would have, I don't want to know).

Yes, aliasing was present in some scenes (which prevented a score of five), and when presented on a large monitor such as the 46" LCD they will indeed look more pronounced, but it wasn't too bad. On my 15" laptop screen, it looked most pronounced on 0:35 of your vid as the sunrise comes up over the planet.

Aliasing is sometimes a telltale sign that a video has been transcoded repeatedly, or at low quality codecs. , which is also sometimes also a telltale sign that the editor was using fansub footage (and everyone knows how I feel about those), which was obviously not the case in yours.

As for how to prevent it, I think the problem is in how you're preparing your footage. Aliasing is sometimes a telltale sign that a video has been transcoded repeatedly, or at low quality codecs. You said you're working from DVD rip, right? What's the process you go to in acquiring and preparing footage? How is it imported into your editing software (and what program do you use)? You said you edited at 848x480 which tells me you resized and transcoded your footage before editing. Why not stay at native 720x480?

I think I can help, but I'd like to know those details first. Of course, each editor has their own process that works for them (and I'm not a prolific editor by any means), so if other editors want to chime in with ideas that worked for them...?

[Scintilla]

As for how to prevent it, I think the problem is in how you're preparing your footage. Aliasing is sometimes a telltale sign that a video has been transcoded repeatedly, or at low quality codecs.

Or, if not that, then it could be a telltale sign that someone forgot to uncheck "Deinterlace when speed is below 100%" in Premiere 6.5 and earlier...

[Vlad G Pohnert]

Actually, after this year I am putting on all my submission forms what the aspect ratio the video file that is being submitted for my contest are in so that I don't have to guess or ask if for any reason it was done in the wrong aspect ratio intentionally.

But indeed, unless the contest rules state HD, I always assume basic NTSC.

Or, if not that, then it could be a telltale sign that someone forgot to uncheck "Deinterlace when speed is below 100%" in Premiere 6.5 and earlier...

Indeed! I've had some good videos with mixed interlacing and non... Try fixing those!

Vlad

[Melichan923]

Okay. Just watched your video. I think I may have been a bit too harsh and I'd raise your tech score up to four if I could, though one extra point from just one judge probably wouldn't make a world of difference in the grand scale of things (and Michael, if the results were that close that it would have, I don't want to know).

Yes, aliasing was present in some scenes (which prevented a score of five), and when presented on a large monitor such as the 46" LCD they will indeed look more pronounced, but it wasn't too bad. On my 15" laptop screen, it looked most pronounced on 0:35 of your vid as the sunrise comes up over the planet.

Oh, I highly doubt one point would make much of a difference. Please don't worry about that. If by some slim chance it did, well at least we came both out of this learning something, lol. ^^

Ah, yes, that scene I remember I tried to fix long ago. I think any anti-aliasing filters I could find couldn't fix it or blurred too much. Tisophote() doesn't even touch it. Source v.s. filtered:

Spoiler :

No filters applied, straight from source:


With an anti-aliasing filter applied, Tisophote():

I will try it out again though with my footage as a whole though and maybe with any luck it will smooth out any other scenes that might be slightly jagged without smoothing too much.

Aliasing is sometimes a telltale sign that a video has been transcoded repeatedly, or at low quality codecs. , which is also sometimes also a telltale sign that the editor was using fansub footage (and everyone knows how I feel about those), which was obviously not the case in yours.

As for how to prevent it, I think the problem is in how you're preparing your footage. Aliasing is sometimes a telltale sign that a video has been transcoded repeatedly, or at low quality codecs. You said you're working from DVD rip, right? What's the process you go to in acquiring and preparing footage? How is it imported into your editing software (and what program do you use)? You said you edited at 848x480 which tells me you resized and transcoded your footage before editing. Why not stay at native 720x480?

I think I can help, but I'd like to know those details first. Of course, each editor has their own process that works for them (and I'm not a prolific editor by any means), so if other editors want to chime in with ideas that worked for them...?

My process of DVD to finished product goes something like this:

-Rip DVD with DVD Decrypter
-Index File with DGIndex
-Create an Avisynth Script and apply filters
-Import script into VirtualDubMod and create Lossless clips (I prefer lagarith for the clips because the files are smaller)
-Edit video and finish video
-Select "Disable resample" on every clip that is slowed down or sped up to prevent any ghosting
-Export the complete file, either HuffYUV or Lagarith
-Compress with TMPGEnc for MPEG, VirtualDubMod for XviD, or Zarx264GUI for MP4

The editing program I use is Sony Vegas 6. As for the resizing before editing part, I think I am going to begin editing at 720x480 instead of re-sizing first since the end result seems to be a slightly better quality file and the lossless clips will be smaller. When I was starting out I liked to resize to square pixels because I was afraid that I'd forget to resize any effects or text I would add in and it would result in those said effects or text looking off when I resized after exporting. I've never changed that habit, maybe it's time I did.

I wonder where it was that I went wrong, hm...

Again I thank you for your time, xstylus! It's very much appreciated.