xstylus wrote:Rider4Z wrote:i DID notice that. Yue's Dreamer in particular, both during the contest and rescreen.
Hmm. That's a good topic to dwell on for a second. What's everyone's thoughts? On one hand, there's the ideology that vids should be shown exactly as the creator sent them. On the other hand, there's the ideology that a coordinator should try to correct simple mistakes such as aspect ratios and gain issues because generally everyone points the blame at the con and the coordinator if something isn't quite right.
I think it's important to maintain the same average volume across all of the videos, but you shouldn't make any more significant edits to the soundtrack of an individual video than uniformly raising or lowering the volume. If you have to adust the volume of sections of the video, you're modifying the creator's work too much; if they horribly unbalanced the soundtrack, that's their fault and should count against them. Automated volume leveling is usually a disaster. Ever watched an action movie in "night" mode and had trouble hearing the gunshots while the dialog is overly loud? Staff shouldn't be adusting the volume of the videos on the fly, but I don't know if you can get around that.
I'd be upset if I had to watch a video in the wrong aspect ratio at the contest, but editors should know better than to stretch fullscreen into widescreen or vice-versa.
I like Vicbond007's saying: "I can't make bad look good, but I can make good look right." I decided this year that I would do the same. There was a lot of aspect ratio corrections done this year, for example. I do intend, however, to revamp the judging system to give a tiny penalty to vids that I have to make You-Should-Know-Better corrections to.
It might be good to include examples of correct and incorrect aspect ratio in the official rules PDF. One thing I would like to say is if you are going to mark people down for such issues,
please do not post different rules on these forums than in the official rules next year. The official rules PDF was never updated with the correct mailing address, and only mentions "the following NTSC Standards; 480p, 480i, 720p, 720i, 1080p or 1080i resolutions", while you posted specific pixel dimensions on these forums (also note that 720 and 1080 resolutions are HD standards, not NTSC standards). The official rules also state that only PCM uncompressed audio is accepted, but I know AAC is accepted and I expect other formats are accepted as well. I got the impression DP leaving might have been the cause of the discrepancy in rules this year, and if that's the case it's understandable, but not everyone is going to expect to have to go to a third-party forum to find the most current rules.
