Anime Revolution 2013 AMV Contest

[Sesami]

Anime Revolution AMV contest 2013 Contest Rules

DEADLINE: 10th August 2013, Saturday

• Entries must be more than 30 seconds.
  Spoiler :

  There is no length limit for entries. Keep in mind that we do pre-screen entries for quality.
• Up to 2 entries per team OR person.
  Spoiler :

  Multiple entries are allowed (max 2). Please fill up one submission form per entry .
• By submitting your video(s), you agree to let us play, copy, and use it to promote the event.
  Spoiler :

  Requests for removal will be put into consideration and handled on a case by case basis.
• Most of your video must be anime/video game footage.
  Spoiler :

  This is an anime convention. Use your best judgement.
• Most of your audio must be music.
  Spoiler :

  There is no arbitrary magic number for the amount of music. Some narration/dialog is fine. Use your best judgement.
• NSFW content should be limited.
  Spoiler :

  The screening is open to the general public. Entries with excessive offensive language, nudity, and/or violence might not be accepted. We accept entries with some NSFW content, but keep it reasonable. Use your best judgement.
• If your entries have won 1st place/Best in Show at any other conventions before 16th August 2013, it will not be accepted.
  Spoiler :

  This is to give everybody a fair chance. This rule only applies to those who won 1st place/Best in Show. 2nd+/runner-up is fine.
• All Winning AMVs will be available on the Anime Revolution’s Youtube account within 2 weeks after the convention.
  Spoiler :

  Winning participants can request to have the posting of their submission delayed for up to 2 months. Basically if you don't want it posted yet for whatever reason, just let us know.

Source guidelines
Breaking any of these would likely disqualify your entry. This WILL be enforced more strictly for this year's contest.

• Don't use content from streaming sites like Youtube/Crunchyroll/etc.
• No subtitles, watermark, or logos on the entry that was not added by you. Broadcast watermarks are fine. We'll arrange to let you watermark your own entry before it gets posted online.
• Use the properaspect ratio. Artistic license aside, there is often only one main choice for this.
• No interlaced footage in the entry. Progressive please.

Accepted File Formats and Codecs
You will have a chance to resubmit if it's not in an accepted format. Quality is not guaranteed if we fix it for you. Please avoid 10bit entries for now.
Video:
This is to avoid having to deal with playback issues on exotic format. This is not difficult to correct but it is unnecessary work.

• H.264/AVC (.mp4 container, this is the preferred format)
• MPEG2 (.mpg container)
• MPEG transport stream (.TS container)
• AVIs are fine, but H264 AVIs are automatically rejected; no exceptions

Audio:
This is flexible as long as audio quality is not severely degraded

• PCM/WAV (Uncompressed, 48khz preferred. 44khz otherwise)

Resolution:
This is flexible as long as the aspect ratio is correct. Here are some suggestions:

• 640x480
• 720x480
• 1280x720
• 1440x1080
• 1920x1080

Frame Rate:
This is to minimize playback issues

• Either 23.976fps (24fps) or 29.97fps (30fps)

Playback
The equipment is not finalized yet. It is difficult to know what the playback resolution will be or what is even available. This likely won't be finalized until after the contest ends.

Awards
Submissions are judged by the audience during screening. You do not have to be present to win. We will ship awards to those who are unable to arrange for a pickup. All participants will be contacted within a week after the convention ends. Winners will be asked to make shipping arrangements then.
Categories:
Audience choice winning entries will be shown at the closing ceremony. There are no prizes for staff favourites.

• Audience choice (3 positions)
• Staff favourites (3 positions)

Submission
We will only be accepting submissions online.
For convenience, we'll be using dropbox for receiving submissions. Visit this page for more information on using dropbox links: Dropbox share links

If you prefer to submit your video via FTP, contact us and we'll set up an account for you.
Use one of the submission forms here:
AMV Submission Form (dropbox)
AMV Submission Form (FTP)

The deadline for the 2013 screening is 28th July 2013. Submissions will be accepted until the day before the convention (15th August 2013) but it may not be part of the 2013 screening due to time constraints.

Status
Participants will be notified of their contest status by 1st August 2013 via e-mail. Accepted participants will receive a free (optional) day pass (day of their choice) to the convention.

Important Dates

• August 10th 2013 - Submission deadline, accepted entries will be shown at the screening
• Before 11th August 2013 - Participants notified of entry status
• 15th August 2013 - Absolute last day of submissions, no guarantee of a spot during screening; these extra submissions may be used for the 2014 contest instead
• 18th August 2013 - AMV Contest screening & Closing ceremony
• Before 25th August 2013 - All participants notified of contest results
• Before 1st Sept 2013 - Winning entries posted on youtube

Questions?
Email amv2013@animerevolution.ca

Note that it may take up to a week for us to response.

[Magicflier]

Entered.

[Scintilla]

All Winning AMVs will be available on the Anime Revolution’s Youtube account within 2 weeks after the convention.
Winning participants can request to have the posting of their submission delayed for up to 2 months. Basically if you don't want it posted yet for whatever reason, just let us know.

So if you win, you do not get the option to leave it unposted past two months?

[Seijin_Dinger]

Use the correct aspect ratio. This is not a personal choice.

Personally I do not view that as a DQ offense. If you have a good screening panel that should receive low enough scores that it most likely would not make the finals. Also what if you were to crop the top and bottom, maintaining proper ratio but taking it from 4:3 to 16:9 (Or if your DVD source did that for you such as the widescreen version of Transformers the movie, or the remastered DBZ box sets)

Also what if someone wants to mess with aspect ration as part of artistic license?

[Seijin_Dinger]

Also, do you intend to do contest playback through virtualdub preview again?

[Seijin_Dinger]

Honestly, we are not posing these questions because we wish to discredit your contest, we wish to help you succeed. You really should pay attention both here and to questions asked on your con's own forums. Clicking the subscribe link will go a long ways.

[Sesami]

Entered.

Thanks

So if you win, you do not get the option to leave it unposted past two months?

Well, we can work something out when the time comes. The reason for that is due to the many requests to see them online. It’s understandable if you just don’t want it to be online, we can try to work around that. But we may still use clips of it for promotional purposes.

Personally I do not view that as a DQ offense. If you have a good screening panel that should receive low enough scores that it most likely would not make the finals. Also what if you were to crop the top and bottom, maintaining proper ratio but taking it from 4:3 to 16:9 (Or if your DVD source did that for you such as the widescreen version of Transformers the movie, or the remastered DBZ box sets)

Also what if someone wants to mess with aspect ration as part of artistic license?

I guess the wording was a little harsh; it wasn’t the intention to imply that there is anything outright wrong. “Proper” or "Appropriate" would be the more appropriate term. This was mainly referring to entries that have been improperly cropped and resized causing an odd looking result. There are “correct” (or more appropriately “proper”) methods for converting between different aspect ratios: letterboxing, cropping, etc. The bad entries will be filtered out; this is more for convenience than anything. The rules have been reworded to reflect this.

Also, do you intend to do contest playback through virtualdub preview again?

Many things went wrong last time. The amount of preparation, equipment, and staffing at that time was -to put it in mildly friendly terms- inadequate. Many things (vague term) has been improved on this year. Virtualdub was only used at the beginning for the first entry; we restarted with a more appropriate player afterwards. So no, I really hope things will run smoothly this time >.<

Honestly, we are not posing these questions because we wish to discredit your contest, we wish to help you succeed. You really should pay attention both here and to questions asked on your con's own forums. Clicking the subscribe link will go a long ways.

I understand, these questions and comments are welcomed. We check the forums and the email account every week or so, hence the slow response. The questions on our forums have also been asked via email and we’ve responded to them (though a week later). The rules have also been edited for clarification after every question. I just noticed that some posts on our forums are missing; I remember seeing more last week… I’ll look into that.