Top post has been updated. Rules are approved, contest is officially open.
As to what prompted the aspect ratio rule change: When I originally drafted the rules, I had been working under the assumption (based on information from the January staff meeting) that no room playing the AMVs would have a high-definition projector. However, at the March staff meeting on Sunday, I discovered that BOTH rooms playing the contest screenings will in fact have HD projectors and wide screens... but, that doesn't change the fact that the rooms playing the overflow blocks will still have the standard kind. The projectors for the Main Events room where the winners will be announced are also 4:3.
So since you obviously can't know in advance whether or not your video will make the finals, it didn't make sense anymore for me to require that MPEG submissions be one DAR or the other. So to maintain maximum fidelity, just encode for whatever DAR makes the most sense for your particular video. I will handle any conversions that may prove necessary.
Thanks for your patience. If anyone who already sent in videos wishes to re-submit (well, this is why I said the rules were tentative), just shoot us an e-mail at
amv@animenext.org and I can have your FTP account re-activated.
