So anyways, I got to thinking that maybe I should go ahead and do this one idea that I've had for a long time. And this idea was to do an Online AMV Iron Chef Tournament. As far as I know, the first of it's kind (I have since heard that they had tried organizing one on the HypeO forums but it never went through). So I talked it over with Pie and a few other people, and so, we're going to do it
Before I go too far, I will give a quick rundown on how an AMV Iron Chef works.
Most of you are familiar with the IC events at anime cons, where 2 AMV editors have to edit a music video in 2 hours. They know ahead of time what anime they will have to work with, plus one secret ingredient. They can pick whatever song they like ahead of time. Well, an online IC works somewhat differently (at least, the way we've done it does). Basically, we have one source to work with that is picked for us (will explain later how this will be handled for the tournament), and then the song is chosen by the judge around 10 minutes before the creators begin editing. Now, due to this, the creators don't exactly have time to plan out their videos the way that convention IC creators do. Henceforth, it's very common for online IC videos to only be around 20-50 seconds into the song. Once the 2 hours are up, IM's are sent to each participant, letting them know that their time is up, and they now have to export what they have, regardless of if they're in the middle of an edit. Now, here's where model-breakdown can occur. Since it's online, how do you know they don't do any last minute fixes or edits while they say they're encoding? Well, this is where it's based on the honor system. Because we're not there in person, we really can't say for sure that they're not cheating. But, such is the limitations of the internet. If it's taking them over an hour to encode and upload, then you can tell that something is up. Anyways, editor encodes to Huffyuv from Premiere, encodes to XviD/DivX/MPEG-1/etc, then uploads to web space or directly to judge(s). Generally an online IC will have around 3 judges to make things as impartial as possible. The judges each vote on which video they liked best, and whichever video gets the most votes, wins!
Phew!.. Okay. Now that you roughly know how a normal online AMV IC works, let's talk about the tournament itself.
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<b>The Online AMV Iron Chef Tournament v1.0
Tournament Coordinator:
AtomX (AIM: Atom Is OK)
Judges:
Pie Row Maniac, Pwolf, Koopiskeva</b>
<b>Who Can Participate</b>:<ul><li>This tournament is open to <b>any</b> creator who would like to join who <b>meets the pre-requisites</b> set below.</li></ul><b>Pre-requisites For Joining</b>:<ul><li><b>Must</b> own at least 10 anime DVDs.</li><li><b>Must</b> know how to rip DVDs and put it into an editable form.</li><li><b>Must</b> be able to dedicate around 3-4 hours of un-interrupted computer time on your arranged battle date.</li><li><b>Must</b> be on a high-speed internet connection (sorry 56k'ers).</li></ul><b>How Many Participants</b>:<ul><li>Either 8 or 16 people (depending on how much interest is shown).</li><li>Participants will be chosen on a <b>FIRST COME FIRST SERVE BASIS</b>. So if you want to join, do so quickly, but <b>DO NOT</b> join if you do not meet your pre-requisites.</li><li>There will be an Alternates list for the First Round in case anyone decides they can't do their battle. But after the first round, anyone who can't do their battles will be disqualified, and their opponent will win by default.</li></ul><b>Elimination</b>:<ul><li>This will be a <b>SINGLE-ELIMINATION</b> Tournament. Once you lose, you are out of the game (a double-elimination tournament of this type would just take WAY too long).</li></ul><b>Battle Dates/Times</b>:<ul><li>When you do your battles is going to be up to each pair of contestants. They will arrange a day when they both have free time. The deadline for the first round matches is Feb. 31st, 2004. If you do not think you will be able to dedicate 3-4 hours on any day before then, do not enter.</li><li>In the case that 2 contestants (plus one of the judges) have completely different schedules and can never find a time then they can both battle at the same time, then they will be allowed to do their videos at separate times (however, the optimum match setup is for both to go at the same time, keep this in mind).</li></ul><b>Tournament Bracket Seeding</b>:<ul><li>Bracket seeding will be done at random. Because there's no real definite way to "rank" each creator from 1-8 (or 1-16), they will be placed on the bracket at random by the tournament coordinator (AtomX).</li></ul><b>Varying Computer Speeds</b><ul><li>I realize that because this is an online contest, people are going to have varied computer power/speed, as opposed to a convention's IC, where they use identical systems. Be that as it may, handicaps will not be given to people with slower computers. If you decide to enter the tournament, you are agreeing <b>NOT</b> to complain that you weren't able to get as far as your opponent due to your computer chugging.</li></ul><b>Music Selection</b>:<ul><li> Just to make this very clear. Unlike convention IC's, each creator will be using <b>THE SAME SONG WITH DIFFERENT SOURCES</b>.</li><li>Every match will have a pre-determined song that will be provided to the contestant approximately 10 minutes before their scheduled battle time by a judge. The songs are going to be very varied in genre, and nothing mainstream. The idea is to give the creator something that they've likely never heard, and see how they are able to work with it.</li>
<li>The contestant is NOT limited to WHAT PART of the audio they want to work with. For example if they can see a good part for the chorus and nothing for the intro, they are free to have their video start at the intro. They can also add any effects to the audio that they wish. Contestants may ONLY use the audio provided to them and nothing else. Meaning, you can't use 1 frame worth of the given song and then switch over to your favorite Linkin Park song. Sorry buddy.</li>
</ul><b>Anime Selection</b>:<ul><li>For this tournament, each contestant will be using <b>ONE DVD</b> worth of anime footage. <b>NOT ONE SERIES</b>, but <b>ONE DVD</b> (meaning, not Love Hina, but Vol. 3 of Love Hina).</li><li>24 hours before the battle, the contestants and AtomX will all meet on AIM. Each contestant will send the judge a list of SIX ANIME DVD's that they own, and number them from 1 to 6. They will then meet in an AIM chat room (or just the .org chat room), and AtomX will type '//roll' which is a command in AIM to have 'OnlineHost' roll 2 six-sided dice. The 2 numbers that come up will be the corresponding DVD selections for each creator, the first number being for the higher seeded creator in the battle. Here's an example:<ul><li>Let's say that Rozard and Pie Row Maniac are battling, with AtomX judging. Rozard would IM AtomX with his list of the following:<ol><li> Castle in the Sky</li>
<li>Ah My Goddess Movie</li>
<li>RahXephon Vol. 1</li>
<li> Cowboy Bebop Vol. 5</li>
<li>Battle Athletes Victory Vol. 7</li>
<li>Lupin III: Pursuit of Harimao's Treasure</li></ol></li><li>And Pie sends him his list:<ol><li> Grave of the Fireflies</li>
<li> Bastard!!</li>
<li> Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust</li>
<li> Excel Saga Vol. 2</li>
<li> Metropolis</li>
<li> Ah My Goddess Movie</li>
</ol></li><li>They then go into the chatroom, AtomX roll's the dice and comes up with '5 3'. Because (in this case) Rozard is the higher seed, his DVD is Battle Athletes Victory Vol. 7, and Pie's is Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.</li></ul></li><li>In the case of both creator's ending up with the same source (like, in the above example, I could have rolled '2 6', and they'd both end up using the Ah My Goddess Movie, along with the same song, which would make for 2 very very similar looking videos (since they'd both be using the same song), which is not what we want to have happen.</li><li>During this 24 hour period after you've chosen your source, you must get your DVD ripped, d2v's and AVS scripts written.</li><li><b>IT IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED</b> that you use the <a href="http://www.nhmk.com/nes/mjpegmethod.html"><b>MJPEG method</b></a> of editing for these IC matches, since you will need to edit very fast, you do not want to have to chug along using the full-res/full-quality VOB files as your editing source. So you should also use the 24 hour period to encode your MJPEGs to edit with.</li><li>Another rule to keep in mind (and why it's a pre-requisite that you own at least 10 DVDs), is that you cannot use the same source more than once. Meaning, if you win your first round, and you used Metropolis as your source, you could not put Metropolis in your 2nd list of 1-6.</li></ul><b>Starting the Battle</b>:<ul><li>Before the match, prepare your computer to be editing-friendly. Meaning, turn off all unnecessary programs</li><li>At the pre-determined time, the judge, and the 2 contestants will meet online, and either go into a private chat room, or just the org chatroom. Therein, the judge will give the contestants a link to the song they will be using. The contestants will then have exactly 15 minutes from that time in which to download and listen to the song. Use this time wisely. Start thinking about which scenes you'll want to use and how you're going to make your edits. Close your eyes, put on some headphones, concentrate on the music, visualize the song in your head, and go with it.</li><li>Another big thing to keep in mind is that you will want to convert your MP3 (all song files will be sent as MP3's) to a WAV beforehand. Sometimes Premiere can handle MP3s funny (as witnessed by my IC with Pie mentioned in the first section.. My timing was completely off after I exported due to it being a VBR MP3). The quickest and easiest way to do this is to load the MP3 into Winamp, go to Options > Output, and select DiskWriter as your Output plug-in. Then simply play the mp3, and it'll automatically write the WAV to wherever it's set to save in DiskWriter's options.</li><li>At the end of the 15 minutes, the judge will do a short countdown, and then say "GO!", and from that point on, you have exactly 2 hours to edit.</li><li>During the battle, it is required you keep AIM online, but you'll definitely want to put up an Away Message, so people don't bother you while you're editing. It is required to keep it online so that when the battle is over, you can be notified by the judge. So when you expect the 2 hour mark is drawing near, uncheck the "Disable Sounds While Away" box in your Away Message window.</li>
</ul><b>Programs You Can Use</b>:<ul><li>You are allowed to use any editing program you'd like (even though I refer to Premiere many times, it's just what we're used to using. But feel free to use Ulead, Magix, Final Cut Pro, etc.). You are also free to use other tools like Photoshop, Flash, etc.</li>
</ul><b>During the Battle</b>:<ul><li><b>TURN AUTO-SAVE ON!!!</b> Set it to save every 1 minute. If your program doesn't support this, well gees I sure am sorry. But sympathy will not be given to people who lost chunks of their project due to a system crash. And don't forget to save your project file as the <b>FIRST THING YOU DO</b>.</li><li>Many people tend to render previews after every cut to make sure it looks right. And while this is usually not a bad idea, it can really slow you down. So if you have to do a preview to see if an edit looks right, just preview that small section (you do this by setting the Work Area, or, the little yellow bar at the top of the timeline, to span just that small section of the timeline. Then when you go to Export, change the Export Setting from "Export Entire Timeline" to "Export Work Area". Makes for much speedier previews.</li><li>Don't forget that the clock is ticking so try to stick with pretty general cuts. Remember you aren't striving to make an AMV that'll win AWA Masters (though kudos to anyone that can pull that off
)</li><li>One major rule, is that you are not allowed to insert your name anywhere into the video. You can add text, but nothing that includes your name, since this tournament will be blind judging.</li></ul><b>End of the Battle</b>:<ul><li>Once the 2 hours has been reached, the judge will IM you to let you know. At this point, you are required to make NO MORE EDITS. Save your project, then export. If you were using the MJPEG method, you should of course save a new copy of your project file, change the video settings to accommodate the DVD settings (I make my MJPEGs at 360x240, and so I edit in that res, so when I go to replace the files with AVS, I change my video settings to 720x480 and Huffyuv).</li><li>Take your exported Huffyuv into VirtualDub or TMPGEnc and make a compressed version. Keep in mind that one thing the judges will be looking at is the video quality, so don't go for a crappy encode.</li><li>Once the video is encoded, you will upload it to an FTP that the judge or coordinator will have provided you the information for.</li><li>AtomX will go in to the FTP and rename each video to "VideoA.avi" and "VideoB.avi"</li><li>The 3 judges (for the first round) will view both videos, discuss, and vote on either Video A or B. They will let AtomX know their votes, and AtomX will reveal the winner to both contestants and the judges. The results will also be posted in the tournaments thread, and bracket will be updated.</li><li>In the event that not all 3 judges are present at the time of the battle, the final decision will be made when all 3 are present.</li></ul><b>Judging Criteria</b>:<ul><li>In the end, the judges decision is pretty much going to be a "which one did I like better" choice. They won't be rating things on a number scale. However, they will be looking at certain things like timing, scene selection, video quality, and just the overall tone of the video.</li><li>The LENGTH of the video will not necessarily be a determining factor. Meaning, a video that looks like crap but is a minute long will probably lose to a video that looks awesome but is 30 seconds. But again, it's all going to come down to the judges personal preference (just like in any AMV contest).</li><li>Another thing to keep in mind is that ONLY AtomX will know who did which video before the judging takes place. So <b>the judging will be blind</b>.</li></ul><b>Grand Prize</b>:<ul><li>What's a good tournament without some kind of prize? Well, because this is our first time doing this, and since I can't exactly afford much, the winner of this tournament will get to pick out any anime DVD they want, up to $25. Yay So, with that, you need to be at least 18 or have your parent's permission to give me your address to have the DVD shipped.</li></ul>
<b>MAKE SURE THAT YOU HAVE READ EVERYTHING ABOVE BEFORE YOU SIGN UP TO JOIN! </b><b>YOU WILL BE EXPECTED TO UNDERSTAND ALL THE RULES IF YOU LET ME KNOW THAT YOU WANT TO BE IN THE TOURNAMENT!</b>
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Well, that's about it
I hope you guys are as excited about this as I am. If there's any questions or concerns, contact me on AIM at "Atom Is OK"
I'm in.
... Duh.