AWA 2005 Pro Contest Discussion Thread

MCWagner · Post by **MCWagner** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 2:37 pm

Just a few reflections (and no one worry about me giving anything away... as it turns out, <i>I</i> haven't gotten a copy from Wayne yet. He's bringing mine by hand this weekend during the AWA staffers meeting) and comments:

1) I could be wrong, but I believe last year the pro competition saw about 48-49 videos. Pro participation has always risen year after year, so there's more this year than ever before.

*Believe me, I'm the one who has to try and fit the monster into the con schedule.*

2) Category nominations: this has proven to be sort of a self-fixing problem in the past, since suggesting new categories allows you to enter a short description of the category you think should be added, so you can clear up whether or not it overlaps with other categories. You're welcome to try and pre-coallate the categories, but that's also part my job, so I'll clear up any tailing ends by the time nominations are over. Just remember, no insulting categories, and no categories with fewer than three applicable contestants.

Beowulf · Post by **Beowulf** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 4:17 pm

I would just like to add that people should absolutely watch their pro dvds on their TELEVISIONS, not their computers. My DVD playing software and windows media player BOTH ruin the aspect ratio of my video and it wouldn't be fun to sit through a hurricane of squashed characters and illedgable effects.

Ashyukun · Post by **Ashyukun** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 4:55 pm

I'd second Beo's comment- but then my laptop pretty much choked on playing the discs back properly in general, so I didn't have much choice but to use the DVD player (thank you for making the DVDs PS2 compatible, guys!).

Brakus · Post by **Brakus** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 5:20 pm

anneke wrote: Only 56 videos this year? Wasn't there like 75 last year or something?

Last year it was 57. (I still have the discs.)

And yes, this year's contest is extremely fascinating. You can pretty much count on each video definitely worth watching more than once. I like how everything's turned out so far.

And bringing up something somebody else mentioned offhand, there's a suprisingly low number of exclusively-FMA or exclusively-Naruto videos in the contest. You'd think with the momentum that both series are experiencing as of late, there'd be more. But the 3 Naruto videos and the 2 FMA videos were ALL excellent.

Castor Troy · Post by **Castor Troy** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 5:28 pm

Brakus wrote:
anneke wrote: Only 56 videos this year? Wasn't there like 75 last year or something?
Last year it was 57. (I still have the discs.)

And yes, this year's contest is extremely fascinating. You can pretty much count on each video definitely worth watching more than once. I like how everything's turned out so far.

And bringing up something somebody else mentioned offhand, there's a suprisingly low number of exclusively-FMA or exclusively-Naruto videos in the contest. You'd think with the momentum that both series are experiencing as of late, there'd be more. But the 3 Naruto videos and the 2 FMA videos were ALL excellent.

I have a feeling the Naruto and FMA videos are gonna be in expo and masters.

Scintilla · Post by **Scintilla** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 5:37 pm

Suggestion: if you're watching the DVDs on a standalone and not on your computer, use analog audio and not digital -- I kept having to change the digital audio mode at the beginning of every video for the audio to come across right, until I finally thought to switch it to analog, and after that it was completely fine.

Castor Troy · Post by **Castor Troy** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 6:28 pm

Yay, got mine today!

*runs off with popcorn to watch*

doughboy · Post by **doughboy** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 7:03 pm

Scintilla wrote:Suggestion: if you're watching the DVDs on a standalone and not on your computer, use analog audio and not digital -- I kept having to change the digital audio mode at the beginning of every video for the audio to come across right, until I finally thought to switch it to analog, and after that it was completely fine.

Cool, I'll have to try that, cause my video sounds like complete ass on my TV. Theres no subtle elements coming through and that's crap cause I used a lot of those for synch points.

genestarwind21122 · Post by **genestarwind21122** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 8:18 pm

I also have to agree that this contest is quiet difficult to judge. This is my first amv contest. So right now I've watched the 3 of the 4 dvd's and have seperated the videos by categories and then started nominating them. I found this to be the easiest and neatest way of doing it. Well good luck to everybody in the contest this year.

Gene Starwind 21122

StudioKZ · Post by **StudioKZ** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 8:30 pm

Beowulf wrote:I would just like to add that people should absolutely watch their pro dvds on their TELEVISIONS, not their computers. My DVD playing software and windows media player BOTH ruin the aspect ratio of my video and it wouldn't be fun to sit through a hurricane of squashed characters and illedgable effects.

:up:

I actually noticed a few cut-off problems with atleast two videos, but I'm not sure if it's an encode problem on the DVD or with the original mpeg file or if the editors just encoded without paying attention to the Title-safe.