As far as the sync, that was a known problem I had been up until 5am the night before figuring out that affected a handful of videos - not all, but a few. The sync problem on some of the videos was due to a transcoding error I had made trying to get everything imported into Final Cut and rendered out as quickly as possible. In the final renders for the contest, I actually went through and hand adjusted all 30 videos so that they would play properly in sync - boy that was fun, lol.
But we couldn't play the final rendered contest last night for two reasons. First, all of the renders were outputted as 4:3, with 16:9 preserved with black bars. But as I already said, the projector was outputting the wrong aspect ratio compared to the resolution we were outputting. The result would have been *super* stretchy videos that would have looked terrible, even worse than what we played. By playing back the original transcoded media in VLC, we were able to at least get it to fill as much of the screen as possible. Second, if you notice, the order on the ballots is not the same as the order listed here on this thread, which is what I assumed the final order would be. Even if we were able to play the rendered contest at the correct aspect ratio, every category would have one or two videos completely out of order, which would have made it confusing to the audience. Since we went to Plan B, playing back the files one by one, I took the opportunity to quickly reorder it according to the ballot and just hope for the best. Thanks to Tadao on the mic, he was able to keep the show flowing as smoothly as possible while we worked through the categories. He's a good man and a great friend. If he's reading this, thank you so much for that, Tadao! =)
Some of these issues could have been avoided if we had better communication internally. As it was, because we had such little time to prepare, we had too many people running on assumptions rather than confirmations and each were off doing their own thing without letting the other know the plan. Yes, we got a completed contest out of it, but it could have been much more polished and professional. That's one of many things we're going to work out over the next few months as we begin to prepare for next year.
For now, however, I'm going to enjoy the wrap up / rescreening of the contest later this afternoon. I'll be there for sure. Can't wait to meet you guys there.
-Jason Fiore
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The changes for next year all sound like good ideas.
