Finalists for Anime Expo Anime Music Video Contest 2008

The Wired Knight · Post by **The Wired Knight** » Fri May 30, 2008 2:52 am

Description is fine if you ask me; though the phrase "Anime fans and editors" reads odd to me because technically these things should be one and the same (unless anime modifies both making an "anime editor" something else). But then again this is just grammer nitpicking. Otherwise looks good to me.

Kazemon15 · Post by **Kazemon15** » Fri May 30, 2008 3:25 am

xstylus wrote:
Kazemon15 wrote:^

=/ I can understand about the jagged lines and stuff. I talked to James last year after the AMV awards and he gave me alot of advice as well as what he looks for in videos. He told me even if a video does have such distractions such as jagged lines and whatnot, the overall video can surpass that if it's good enough.
I should be honest, jagged lines is something I'm not as much of a hardass on because sometimes it can be a result of the playback program, and I took that into account during judging. I've seen Quicktime do jaggies that on some files that were perfectly encoded, yet VLC plays them beautifully. But massive macroblocks and Divx logos though... Grrrr...

Granted, just because a video has them doesn't mean it sucks, and it didn't automatically guarantee a video the kiss of death from me (video quality was only one of five criteria we were judging on). Still, it's a pet peeve of mine because it takes just an ounce of care to assure good quality.

He also mentioned that not all DVDs (such as boxsets) are as clear. Since some dvds cram 5 or 6 episodes on one disk, lowering the quality.
Almost all legit boxsets contain the exact same discs as the singles, just repackaged with a pretty box. ADV is the only one that puts different discs in their sets, and they just remove extras to fit in an additional episode. Buy them with confidence.

Bootleg sets, however, are poor quality and cram too many episodes per disc, so those should be avoided at all costs. That's an explosively volatile subject with me so that's all I'll say on that matter.

I believe a video should be judged on quantity not quality. If the quality is decent enough and the video is very good, I think that's all that should matter.... =/
Er... I disagree with the quantity vs. quality part, but I wholeheartedly agree with the rest of that sentence. It's just that this judge's opinion of decent doesn't include Divx logos and large macroblocks.

Heh okay, I understand. Thanks. =3

Yes... bootleg = bad bad bad! I learned in 2006 the hard way of sucky quality amvs. XD Let's just say when the DVDs came out in English, I bought every single one for quality. lol.

I can understand why it's a pet peeve though... it can get annoying sometime.

Yeah I can also understand about ADV boxsets....other boxsets I dont have a problem with, but ADV... I love having creditless op and end extras, so I try to buy those in volumes. =3

DigitalPanther · Post by **DigitalPanther** » Fri May 30, 2008 3:26 am

The Wired Knight wrote:Description is fine if you ask me; though the phrase "Anime fans and editors" reads odd to me because technically these things should be one and the same (unless anime modifies both making an "anime editor" something else). But then again this is just grammer nitpicking. Otherwise looks good to me.

Thanks. Between that and many suggestions from Troy and some hashing back and forth we got something together that I think works pretty well. As soon as it is approved I will let you guys know what it was for.

-DP

Castor Troy · Post by **Castor Troy** » Fri May 30, 2008 8:45 am

All you really needed to write was this..

amv > cosplay

DigitalPanther · Post by **DigitalPanther** » Fri May 30, 2008 9:45 am

Castor Troy wrote:All you really needed to write was this..

amv > cosplay

Yeah last time I implied one was better or more popular than the other, my ass lost several pounds...the hard way. Y'all are sharks when riled. Cosplayers? Just as bad.

-DP

KagatoAMV · Post by **KagatoAMV** » Fri May 30, 2008 9:57 am

DigitalPanther wrote: Yeah last time I implied one was better or more popular than the other, my ass lost several pounds...the hard way. Y'all are sharks when riled. Cosplayers? Just as bad.

-DP

And watch out for the AMVers that Cosplay...

Actually the "popularity" scale I question is those that say AX Idol is more popular than the AMV Contest.

MisterFurious · Post by **MisterFurious** » Fri May 30, 2008 10:01 am

xstylus wrote:For me, experience is everything. It is extremely difficult for me to focus on what the creator is trying to convey if there is an on-screen distraction that it takes me out of the experience. Macroblocks, jagged edges, poorly hidden subtitles, and network/Divx logos are just such a distraction, and an enormous one at that.

Ooh! Ooh! Can I mention 16:9 anamorphic as another distraction? It's a particular pet peeve of mine.

For those of you who don't know (and there seem to be a lot of you, as I see this in AMV's all the time), here comes some more technical talk.

Some, but not all anime is presented on DVD in a "widescreen" format, meaning the video is encoded with the image squeezed about 33% along the vertical axis. The raw 720 x 480 MPEG2 video stream shows characters that look skinny, but also has a signal embedded that directs the DVD player to stretch the image back out for 16:9 screens, and to add letterboxing bars on the top and the bottom for old 4:3 screens.

Here is the critical part. When you rip these MPEG2 files, your computer doesn't know to unsqueeze the image! You edit away on your system, thinking everything is fine, but when the video is screened at a con, everything is squeezed! It's distracting, and shows to me that the creator didn't pay attention to the finished product.

In a highly competitive contest like AX, fractions of points separate finalists from non-finalists. If I were judging and I had to choose between two equally good videos, one where the creator took the time to unsqueeze the anamorphic image, and the other where the creator didn't, which one do you think I would vote for?

When sending in a video, make it the best you possibly can. If it looks good on your computer monitor, that may be fine for posting to the org, but don't assume that it'll look okay on a 20-foot screen at AX. Before you submit, play your video on the biggest video monitor you can find (notice I said video monitor, not computer monitor - I won't bog this post down with further technicalities, but it does make a difference, trust me). If something doesn't look right - if you see flickers, blocky pixels, or if the image looks squeezed - guess what? You've got a little more work to do.

You're the creator of the video. If you don't care enough about it to take the time to make it look as good as it can before submitting it, then why should the judges care?

YouTube · Post by **XStylus** » Fri May 30, 2008 11:41 am

MisterFurious wrote:
xstylus wrote:For me, experience is everything. It is extremely difficult for me to focus on what the creator is trying to convey if there is an on-screen distraction that it takes me out of the experience. Macroblocks, jagged edges, poorly hidden subtitles, and network/Divx logos are just such a distraction, and an enormous one at that.
Ooh! Ooh! Can I mention 16:9 anamorphic as another distraction? It's a particular pet peeve of mine.

Y'know, I almost forgot about that one. Out of 140+ videos, I can count on one hand the number of videos with that problem this year. There were very few.

It pained me, more than any other, to have to give low video quality marks to videos like that. Why? Because in a time where there are more and more submissions being based on downloaded source (The #2 most used video was based on an unreleased show. How was all that source footage obtained?), at least the videos in question were based on DVD source, thus indicating there was at least a fair effort to use quality material.

The de-anamorphic mistake is a very easy one to make though, so hopefully we'll have info on how to correct it in next year's FAQ.

milkmandan · Post by **milkmandan** » Fri May 30, 2008 2:25 pm

whops double post

milkmandan · Post by **milkmandan** » Fri May 30, 2008 2:27 pm

xstylus wrote: Y'know, I almost forgot about that one. Out of 140+ videos, I can count on one hand the number of videos with that problem this year.

It pained me, more than any other, to have to give low video quality marks to videos like that. Why? Because in a time where there are more and more submissions being based on downloaded source (The #2 most used video was based on an unreleased show. How was all that source footage obtained?), at least the videos in question were based on DVD source, thus indicating there was at least a fair effort to use quality material.

The de-anamorphic mistake is a very easy one to make though, so hopefully we'll have info on how to correct it in next year's FAQ.

The HowtoGuides on the org have this written out very well. and explained in awesome detail. Maybe we could point that to them.

MisterFurious wrote: Ooh! Ooh! Can I mention 16:9 anamorphic as another distraction? It's a particular pet peeve of mine.

For those of you who don't know (and there seem to be a lot of you, as I see this in AMV's all the time), here comes some more technical talk.

Some, but not all anime is presented on DVD in a "widescreen" format, meaning the video is encoded with the image squeezed about 33% along the vertical axis. The raw 720 x 480 MPEG2 video stream shows characters that look skinny, but also has a signal embedded that directs the DVD player to stretch the image back out for 16:9 screens, and to add letterboxing bars on the top and the bottom for old 4:3 screens.

Here is the critical part. When you rip these MPEG2 files, your computer doesn't know to unsqueeze the image! You edit away on your system, thinking everything is fine, but when the video is screened at a con, everything is squeezed! It's distracting, and shows to me that the creator didn't pay attention to the finished product.

In a highly competitive contest like AX, fractions of points separate finalists from non-finalists. If I were judging and I had to choose between two equally good videos, one where the creator took the time to unsqueeze the anamorphic image, and the other where the creator didn't, which one do you think I would vote for?

When sending in a video, make it the best you possibly can. If it looks good on your computer monitor, that may be fine for posting to the org, but don't assume that it'll look okay on a 20-foot screen at AX. Before you submit, play your video on the biggest video monitor you can find (notice I said video monitor, not computer monitor - I won't bog this post down with further technicalities, but it does make a difference, trust me). If something doesn't look right - if you see flickers, blocky pixels, or if the image looks squeezed - guess what? You've got a little more work to do.

I agree 100%. I noticed that at this years FanimeCon's AMV contest, several entries had wide screen source squeezed in 720x480.

I am already going to be giving a little demo and tutorial to help some people understand this as well during the AX08 AMV M&G.

Will you be going over this at the AMV101 Workshop, Brad?