Otafest 2007 - AMV Contest

jen-chan · Post by **jen-chan** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 11:21 pm

Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen!

I'm the Special Events Coordinator for Otafest, the annual con held in Calgary, AB, Canada. Otafest 2007 will be held on May 19-20, 2007 at the University of Calgary!

This will be our 4th contest, and hopefully, our biggest and best-est!

Currently, we are looking for any AMVs made after May 2006.

Rules have recently been posted and can be found at:

http://www.otafest.com/amv.html

Please read the rules before entering the contest!

Entry into the contest is very simple! Please send an email to: Jenny Chan: special-events@otafest.com

Please provide the following information in the email:

1) Your name or your studio’s name

2) The AMV’s information
a. The name of your video(s)
b. The name of the series from which you are drawing your visual material
c. The name of the song you are using, as well as the original artist

3) Please state whether or not your entry has been submitted to other contest

4) A link to where your video can be downloaded.

Entry deadline is April 30th. Please have your email sent by April 30th.

Once again, Otafest is really proud to announce that Vlad's will be assisting in the showing of our contest (THANK YOU VLAD!!) and all entries will be re-encoded back to mpeg2 and played off of Vlad's equipment for superior playback!

As such, mpeg2 is the preferred format, although all entries will be reencoded to this format!

Last year's winners were:

Honorable Mention (4): Slay - The Summer Memories
Honorable Mention (3): Richard King - If I could rewind
Honorable Mention (2): Jade_eyed_angel - Good-bye, Nina
Honorable Mention (1): Boyd Hale - Major Tom

Third Place: Mitch Sturkenboom - F.E.A.R.
Second Place: Matt Foldenauer - Dreaming - End of the World
First Place: Hana no Judgeholden - A City Divided

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to write!

Cheers,

Jenny Chan
Otafest 2007 - Special Events Co-Coordinator
special-events@otafest.com
http://www.otafest.com

Scintilla · Post by **Scintilla** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 11:32 pm

The Rules wrote:- evidence of special effects or superior editing techniques used. 5 pts

Does this mean that using nothing but cuts and fades will hurt our score?

I also don't see anything (besides what you just said about MPEG-2) about acceptable formats, framerates, resolutions, codecs...?

Org Profile · Post by **Vlad G Pohnert** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 12:08 am

Scintilla wrote:
The Rules wrote:- evidence of special effects or superior editing techniques used. 5 pts
Does this mean that using nothing but cuts and fades will hurt our score?

I also don't see anything (besides what you just said about MPEG-2) about acceptable formats, framerates, resolutions, codecs...?

If you follow these tech specs, they'll yeald best results and I have the most experience in working with:

Resolution: 640x480 or 720x480 (anything less will start to show on a huge screen)

Prefered Codec: Mpeg2, XviD, DivX, WMV.. Use best or most reasonable bit rate as possible... If using WMW, high bit rates are even more important for a resonable look on the big screen (the worst artifacting usually happend between fades, so review your video on a larger TV if you can. DV is fine as well, mpeg1 is not advisable. Other codecs I can DL and use if nessesarry, but it will add more time for conversion...

Framerate: 29.97 is prefered and saves a LOT of time... 23.97, 24 or 25 will work, but they will end up as 29.97...

Hope that helps..

Vlad

jen-chan · Post by **jen-chan** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 12:28 am

Thanks Vlad!

Scintilla wrote:
The Rules wrote:- evidence of special effects or superior editing techniques used. 5 pts
Does this mean that using nothing but cuts and fades will hurt our score?

Not necessarily! If your cuts and fades are made such that excellent timing or precision or artistic vision is evident, that is also considered to be "superior editing technique".

So, for example, a video with special effects thown in for the sake of having special effects will not score as high as a video with no special effects, but superior cuts and fades.

However, a video with only moderately well done cuts and fads but meaningful special effects will probably score higher than one with only cuts and fades in this category.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Jenny Chan
Otafest 2007 - Special Events Co-Coordinator
special-events@otafest.com
http://www.otafest.com

dreamawake · Post by **dreamawake** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 5:28 pm

Sweet, entry sent =)

Org Profile · Post by **808-buma** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 10:07 pm

question - are bumpers (either before or after) allowed? or are they a no-no still?

Autraya · Post by **Autraya** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 5:12 pm

submission sent and recieved.... but yeah mine has bumpers to I guess Vlad is editing them out? Since the rules didn't say you couldn't have them (or did I miss that part?)

Org Profile · Post by **Vlad G Pohnert** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 7:49 pm

Autraya wrote:submission sent and recieved.... but yeah mine has bumpers to I guess Vlad is editing them out? Since the rules didn't say you couldn't have them (or did I miss that part?)

I'll have to ask about that... Best is to always have a version with no bumpers for any contest as most have rules not to have them. It also depends on how the bumbers are intergrated.. If they overlap the video, then cutting them out means cutting part of the video...

I'll let Jen asnwer on this

Vlad

jade_eyed_angel · Post by **jade_eyed_angel** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 11:48 pm

i am making something new and sexy just for this ^_^

Autraya · Post by **Autraya** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 2:15 am

Vlad G Pohnert wrote: I'll have to ask about that... Best is to always have a version with no bumpers for any contest as most have rules not to have them. It also depends on how the bumbers are intergrated.. If they overlap the video, then cutting them out means cutting part of the video...

I'll let Jen asnwer on this

Vlad

I can send you a version with no bumpers via aim (or something) if it makes your job easier but unfortunately i dont know how to encode into mpeg2 (tried it once....never again lol) i still have the huffy so ....