AWA PRO PROBLEMS

[kholaras]

I watched the videos before I ever looked at the website.

Well, there's a link up on the VAT site but for anyone who looks here before watching the discs, I've assembled a viewing cheatsheet, broken down by disc. Check it out http://www.awa-vat.com/pro_list.pdf

It's not pretty, it's nothing you couldn't do yourself taking notes. But the title bumpers fly by pretty fast, and hopefully it'll make your viewing experience a little more enjoyable.

[The Wired Knight]

Anybody know why video 43 (done to Magnetic Rose) is listed as "removed" on the PDF file we downloaded? Is there a reason I'm not supposed to vote for this one?

[SailorDeath]

There was a problem and the wrong video was entered accidentally. The creator who was supposed to be entered there had decided that he would enter the video into another contest instead of having everyone download his video seperately.

[MCWagner]

There was a problem and the wrong video was entered accidentally. The creator who was supposed to be entered there had decided that he would enter the video into another contest instead of having everyone download his video seperately.

Yup, that's the case. Big screw up on our end. I sent out a general message to everyone in the pro contest... you should've gotten a notice.

[Illia Sadri]

One thing to consider for next year with the dvd encoding is that for those of us watching on a high definition television, the 16:9 aspect ratio shows show up in the confines of the 3:4 area with black bars on the top and the bottom. I can adjust to account for most of this, but it is not perfect and I hate to lose any part of a video. However in the next couple years more and more particpants will be using it and it would be ideal for the disks to be presented in a format that allows for both to view them adequately.

[madmallard]

this actually has just as much to do with your player of choice outputting the correct signal to your monitor.

Our primary focus, however, is that it plays first.

[Illia Sadri]

Um... no basically everything is presented as 4:3 pulldown and the 16:9 footage basically is presented as a 16:9 would show on a traditional 4:3 screen rather than true 16:9. This is with every devise availiable, a monitor that displays 1920*1080 progressive as well as a television with that resolution.

While playback is most important, having the proper tags for videos is helpful because I can zoom the picture on the television so that it corrects itself but it is not perfect and one video in particular on disk 2 had parts of the text cut off as a result of this process. It is possible to have the portions tagged as each aspect ratio and thus have it present appropriately on all television sets since the disks were authored with videos being their own individual tracks.

It is not a huge problem but something that I think should be mentioned for next year.

[WalterScott]

But our entries have to be formatted first and foremost for projection at the con which is going to be 4:3, right? That's why we have to do our own letterboxing. Ideally, yes, you would want to encode a 16:9 AMV without bars but with 16:9 'anamorphic' flags, and you'd get the best possible display on a widescreen TV. I don't know enough about projectors to say if and when this could be an option for a con showing.

[kholaras]

As the resident AWA Tech Monkey, I think I can confirm that this is, in part, the issue at hand.

The projectors we use are standard 4:3, rather than the newer Wide XGA or so-called Multimedia Projectors that are becoming more popular right now. I do not know the specs on the main projector we rent, but safe to say you do not want to even remotely look straight into the lens. I doubt they make a 16:9 yet with the brightness, contrast ratio, etc that would fit our needs. Even if they did, it's uncertain if the main ballroom for the awards ceremony would be similarly equipped blah blah blah.

There's also the concern of the hardware decoder cards we're using. They do not support HDTV formats and natively rescale 16:9 to fit 4:3 formatting. So yea, arguably we could have left it widescreen and let the hardware handle it, but my experience with these cards is that can be flaky. I'm also exploring the viability of different, HDTV capable cards in conjunction with a rewrite of our playback software to possibly make this forward migration path possible.

But until then, playability and compatibility with the con systems is of higher priority. Furthermore, if I know the video you're referring to, the text horribly violated the title safe region anyway.

[dokidoki]

Furthermore, if I know the video you're referring to, the text horribly violated the title safe region anyway.

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