Otakon 2008 AMV Contest Rules: THEY'RE HERE

Org Profile · Post by **VicBond007** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 9:17 am

OK all. The rules have been approved and I forwarded the information to the Otakon webfolks, but so that you don't have to wait, the rules are also available here:

http://vicbond007.com/Otakon2008/Otakon ... Clean.html

In case the submission form on the Otakon website is not displaying properly, a backup copy of the online submission form is located here:

http://vicbond007.com/OtakonSubform/OtakonSubform.html

I will still use this thread to entertain questions about the contest or AMV events at the convention.

Org Profile · Post by **VicBond007** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 9:17 am

reserved for long winded rules that take up more than one post.

wurpess · Post by **wurpess** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 11:01 am

YAY!!! Signs of life!!! *^_^* *awaits official rules and stuff*

dwchang · Post by **dwchang** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 12:54 pm

So the rumors were true

Good luck with running the contest man. You're gonna need it

. Maybe Dad can help you.

dji · Post by **dji** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 2:21 pm

dwchang wrote:Maybe Dad can help you.

Dad? I thought Vlad was more like our grand father... no wait.. thats Jim K. never mind.

Sonydjsnmix · Post by **Sonydjsnmix** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 5:03 pm

Hey! I have some technical questions about how the amvs will be shown and how I should send it in the contest so sorry if this is the wrong place to ask.

Last year I submitted a Princess tutu amv to Otakon and I got to watch it in the regular screenings. This one

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members ... p?v=144335

50% of the amv have really bright footages. Mostly white and light pink colors. When I watch it on my computer it looks fine and I can see everything. When I watched it in the screening it was pretty much PURE white. I couldn't see any details of the footages. So everyone only got to see a part of my amv which kinda made me sad.

This year I'm planning on sending an Angelic Layer amv and this anime also have several bright footages.

My question is should I make my amv 10 or 15 percent darker this time around?

Org Profile · Post by **VicBond007** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 7:19 pm

The contest will be screened straight from a Netstream 2000 which outputs broadcast-grade NTSC colors. This is good and bad because for people who know what they are doing, their videos will look amazing. Unfortunately, most people rip their videos and expand their black and white levels to 0 luma and 255 luma respectively. This looks fine on a PC, but when you output that to a TV, it'll wash out the whites and the blacks. The easy fix is that after you render your video, start a new project, drop your completed video on the timeline, and apply Adobe's "TV Colors" filter to the whole thing. This will scale back your luma levels to 16-235 instead of 0-255 so that your video displays properly on a TV without any clamping (The video will look "duller" on a PC monitor. This is normal. It will look fine on a TV).

Whenever I get a video that I have to re-encode, I check the luma range and scale it on a case-by-case basis, so if you're totally baffled by everything that I just said, just send in what you have and I'll work it out

The other factor is that the projectors have to be properly calibrated. There's only so much you can do by making adjustments at the source. If the contrast on the projector isn't set right, it doesn't matter how much I lower the contrast on the feed, it will still look bad. Unfortunately, despite paying lots of money for union workers to manage the display equipment, it's quite possible that a projector was not set up properly at the con. Doubly unfortunately, all I would be able to do is complain, as I can't touch their gear.

The best I can do is promise that my equipment will be set to a proper reference level, and that I'll do a thorough testing at the con to ensure that everyone's entries are presented properly.

Sonydjsnmix · Post by **Sonydjsnmix** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 7:34 pm

Thanks for the answer Vic!

Im at college right now and my finished amv is at home so I won't be able to touch it and try to do what you just told me for about a month. Im using Vegas 7.0 so Idk whether i have Adobe's "TV Colors" filter.

I'll ask more questions if I run into any problems then.

Thanks again!

dwchang · Post by **dwchang** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 2:45 pm

dji wrote:
dwchang wrote:Maybe Dad can help you.
Dad? I thought Vlad was more like our grand father... no wait.. thats Jim K. never mind.

If only I had the picture of Vlad with his arm around his children from Otakon 2004...*sigh*.

And yes Vic is in it ;P.

TaranT · Post by **TaranT** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 2:14 am

Sonydjsnmix wrote:... Im using Vegas 7.0 so Idk whether i have Adobe's "TV Colors" filter....

Try the Broadcast Colors effect. Although the one time that I used this, it was taking so long that I just canceled the render. It's faster to just go through your video clip by clip fixing problem areas which are actually easy to identify.