Quick questions about creators and contests...

[Vlad G Pohnert]

Again, I rather see a little loss in video quality due to having the contest on VHS only, then to try and force a contest/convention to accept digital entries that they can't handle. How many contests have you been at where the digital submissions were handled poorly? Bad sound, interlacing, other various issues with the video...etc...

The contest should accept what they feel it can handle.

Anneke

Well, yea and no... If it's the only option, then yes.. but from what I hear, they don't want or ask for help so is sounds like they just don't want to do it instead of seeing if they can.

If depends also how many entires you are satisfied with.. if your a small contest and don't take digital submissions, chances are you'll not get enough to have a contests.. I know that all too well as I run smaller contests...

These days there are so many that if your behind the times and harder to submit to, chances are creators will submit to the ones that accept digital submissions...

Vlad

[Scintilla]

The Otakon 2005 prescreening tapes were just that -- VHS tapes.

The only thing I really noticed was that it made the macroblocks from the poorly compressed digital submissions look not AS noticeable. Evened the field a bit in terms of video quality, if you will.

My video probably had some of the craziest visuals in the contest, and none of it was "killed"; it looked just fine.

[TaranT]

[Nothing to prove.. it's a fact... tjhe problem I have with this prossess is that by first copying ot to VHS you loose quality.. them I assume the master tape for the contests id made by coying all the tapes to it.. another gneration loss there... so by the time it's on the big screen, that's two generation losses.

Someone running a VHS-only contest may not be motivated to make a master tape for the show; i.e. cue up each tape, then run the contest by playing each one in turn. (A more sophisticated setup would have two VCRs and a switchbox.) The first contest I entered was run like that. It's almost foolproof and needs very little time and preparation.

[Vlad G Pohnert]

Yes, that is true, but again I STRESS I'm not against the idea of using VHS, but more or less just pointing out it's going to be harder that way to get a resonable selection of AMVs.. that all...

Vlad

[Castor Troy]

With cheap dvd burners and blanks, there's no excuse for cons not accepting digital submissions nowadays.

You can always burn to dvd, then record to vhs. I had to do this for the NES Project to play at Otakon 2004 at Matt Pyson's request.