2010 Anime Central AMV Contest Results

[ngsilver]

The deadline has passed. FTP and Entry submissions are now closed.

To further discuss our rules regarding re-submission after the deadline. You are allowed 1 chance to get your video in correctly. You will request the resubmission FTP account just like you'd request a regular FTP account. You have 2 days to get your video in after being notified of the DQ. You must check the entry system in order to find out if your entry is DQ'ed, an email notification is not guaranteed.

In order to assure that the version you are uploading is correct you can use a program called gspot (google it.) We use this to check settings. It will tell you the frame rate, aspect ratio, audio codec, audio sample rate (make sure it's 48Khz,) video codec, and much more. It is recommended that you check your entry before submitting because you will not get a 2nd chance to re-submit!

Finally, the 2 day grace period is also not guaranteed. It all depends on how long it takes Outlawed (our tech guy) to get through QC on your videos. As I said, our window to allow for re-submissions is only about 1 week or so long. After that point we cannot offer re-submission as we must start culling entries for the final showing.

[outlawed]

First big thanks to all who submitted. I enjoy seeing your hard work every year. Probably one of the things that keeps me interested =p

Ok I have a lot of videos to download and then review. Hopefully that will be complete Wed night.

There are a large number of new submitters this year. All but a few videos that were flagged for a DQ would have had their answer to what would happen by checking the requirements for MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 file formatting that were written. It's generally a concern to me when we get sent a wmv file or something with a frame size that doesn't match what is explicity listed. This means either you did not perform Quality Control or there was some confusion with the rules. For future reference if you have confusion with rules you should always contact us before submitting this helps me improve them.


Copy & Paste From the contest FAQ http://www.acen.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=34824
-----------------------------------------------
Perform Quality Control
-----------------------------------------------
The majority of the tech problems we see with submissions are the result of poor Quality Control. Do not create extra work for yourself. Just because your file plays in your media player do not assume you have formatted it properly. Always double check your file and compare the output you encoded. If you burned a disc don't assume a verify pass means its good. You must play back the file and watch it all the way through.

A program like http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en is useful for checking your file's formatting from its header but you should still always watch the entire video through to see if there are problems. Programs like this can often report things slightly different from playback so it still does not hurt to triple check and use another program to check and see how the file is actually being decoded.

[Kazemon15]

At first, I sent in my files with the wrong aspect ratio (720x480, which is what most cons go for) so I didn't realize it was different for this con and should have checked out the rules more closely.

Also, I re-submitted, but one of my files could not encode well to mp4, so I encoded it 29.97 fps 720x480 mpeg2 on my export settings. Only problem is I couldn't do anything with the audio. The audio is 48 kHz, but when I exported, it became PCM. Is that going to be a problem? It was my first time exporting as mpeg2, as well.

[SailorDeath]

At first, I sent in my files with the wrong aspect ratio (720x480, which is what most cons go for) so I didn't realize it was different for this con and should have checked out the rules more closely.

Also, I re-submitted, but one of my files could not encode well to mp4, so I encoded it 29.97 fps 720x480 mpeg2 on my export settings. Only problem is I couldn't do anything with the audio. The audio is 48 kHz, but when I exported, it became PCM. Is that going to be a problem? It was my first time exporting as mpeg2, as well.

For mpeg 2 we use mp2 stereo audio, and PCM is uncompressed, Outlawed will probably post something about it,

What encoder are you using for mpeg2 compression?

[Kazemon15]

I exported mpeg2 directly out of my adobe premiere elements 1.0. Since I didn't know how to make mpeg2 a different way.

[GloryQuestor]

I exported mpeg2 directly out of my adobe premiere elements 1.0. Since I didn't know how to make mpeg2 a different way.

Yeah, the Premiere Elements 1.0 MPEG-2 encoder wasn't very good. They changed over to a more reliable third-party MPEG decoder in Version 3 and later because of the issues with it.

You'll probably want to look into the various options out there for MPEG-2 encoding. Though, my recommendation to you is to buy any Premiere Elements Version 4 and above (or to go with Sony Vegas, which is about the same price and is a bit more stable).

[LittleAtari]

Kaz, we'll get you a good h264 MP4. Dont worry

[Kazemon15]

Thanks, LA. ^^

Although I'm not sure if I'll be allowed to re-submit it again...

Thanks for all your information! I learned alot. I tried it on Vegas and managed to do it with the audio in the rules. I have Vegas, but barely know how to use it. I'm more of an Adobe person. Too bad I already submitted it again. << I thought I had to resubmit them before the deadline came and I was stressed to get them in.

[Sephiroth]

Uploaded a new one to the same ftp with fixed audio.

[outlawed]

We are now up to date. The flood of entries received around the due date have all been run through QC by me. There are more entries with a disqualification status now.

Visit the contest website to see if your videos passed QC (it will say video checked).

Re-submissions are due by Sunday 23:59 EDT. You only get one chance to fix the video. If the issues cannot be fixed or you do not have time to fix them then you do not need to notify us.

If I sent e-mail to some of you directly and you are getting bounces when replying then PM me here on the org. I had to set some hardcore mail options to bounce some spam and some of the free providers like hotmail or yahoo are getting bounced if you are outside the USA.

Don't forget our department has an e-mail address of amv@acen.org but if you need to deal with something relating to a video and tech you can always PM me directly here if you prefer.

It's been a long day and I'm tired. Night all.