Acen Report... kinda

[Garylisk]

Well, here's my personal take on Acen.

Day one, drove from 4am til about 10am, arrived.
Realized very quickly that there were already a ton of people there. Oh well. We parked the car and headed over to Registration.

We were non pre-reg. Our line moved faster than the pre-reg line. Go figure. Poor bastards. Guess that's the price they had to pay for saving money by pre-registering.

Anyway, moving on, the first thing we did after thatwas get our hotel room. taking our stuff to the room was no easy task. Why? Because the four elevators that go up and down between the 11 floors of the hotel were jam-packed. All of them. ALL WEEKEND. I can't even begin to express my anger at this. for example, people on, say, floor 5, need to go down. an elevator arrives, heading up. Let's say this elevator has 5 people in it, and these 5 people on floor 5 need to get on an elevator going down. Do they wait for another elevator going down? Nope. The jump on board the up elevator. It goes up to floor 7. On floor 7, 2 people get off who were on their way up. Now 4 more people who want to go down get on. The elevator is now very cramped, having 12 people on it. It goes up to floor 9. let's say there's a group of 3 or 4 people on floor 9 that need to go down. Too bad, no room.

What's wrong with this picture? The people on floor 5 didn't have far to go down. They could have taken the damn stairs. The poor bastards on floor 9 don't want to take that long stair walk down. the whole idea, which nobody at the con seemed to grasp, is that people on higher floors should get the option on getting on an elevator no matter what, since it would already be emptied out when it gets to their floor. This way they can avoid a long walk in the stairs. People on lower floors have an option of wait for an elevator or take the stairs. It's supposed to just work out, but because of jackasses, it didn't.

Not to mention that 2 of the elevators broke from people overloading them and/or jumping while in them. Assholes. Stupid little kids.

Anyway, I'll get off the subject of the elevators.

Day one, I was very sleep deprived, so it's all kind of a blur. I remember meeting Omnistrata fairly early on. His namebadge was supposed to say "Omnistrata Studios" but the badge printer only printed "Omnistrata Stud" - I found this completely hilarious.

Anyway, I piddled around, talked with people, checked out the AMV room, saw Quu there, also saw dwchang there.

That's all I remember of Friday, really... if I did anything else, I don't remember it very well.

Oh yeah. Saw this JRock, visusal k kind of band whose name I can't remember. That was cool.

Saturday was fun, though. Partied harty. Checked outthe dealers room, which was mad pimp, despite the fact that I hear it was not as good as last year.

I saw the rerun of the AMV contest, which I thought was pretty damn good. One video that caught my eye was a Shamanic Princess video that used Evanescence music. Very well done... I can't wait to DL it.

I burned a bunch of CDs with my AMVs on them, passed them out to random people, tried to get them to play my vids in the AMV room. Appearently the AMV room's (substandard?) equipment can only play MPEG2 and MPEG1 videos, and all my stuff was MPEG4. Why they can't use a standard TV out is beyond me. That's all we use at Archon, and it rocks gonads. Any format. ANY FORMAT. anyway.... I was pissed about that one.

Anyway, saw Nabeshin (Yes, THAT one) walking around the halls randomly with crowds of people following him. That was cool.

Went to the car. Locked the keys in the car. Got nervous...

Later on, I got drunk and partied my brains out just hanging around talking to people and stuff.

Passed out in the hotel room.

Sunday, called locksmith, got keys out of car, pakced things, left.

All in all, I give the con a 7 out of 10. I like Archon better, but this was a different and awesome experience.

[trythil]

I burned a bunch of CDs with my AMVs on them, passed them out to random people, tried to get them to play my vids in the AMV room. Appearently the AMV room's (substandard?) equipment can only play MPEG2 and MPEG1 videos, and all my stuff was MPEG4. Why they can't use a standard TV out is beyond me. That's all we use at Archon, and it rocks gonads. Any format. ANY FORMAT. anyway.... I was pissed about that one.

1) The NetStream 2000 is an MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 decoder.

2) MPEG-4 works with extremely high bitrate video, but MPEG-2 tends to look better.

3) The MPEG-2 requirement has been stated in the rules since, oh, I dunno, eternity.

[Castor Troy]

Day one, I was very sleep deprived, so it's all kind of a blur. I remember meeting Omnistrata fairly early on. His namebadge was supposed to say "Omnistrata Studios" but the badge printer only printed "Omnistrata Stud" - I found this completely hilarious.

[Flint the Dwarf]

Did my video get into the contest? o.o I'm guessing not, but I had to ask.

[Vancore]

I burned a bunch of CDs with my AMVs on them, passed them out to random people, tried to get them to play my vids in the AMV room. Appearently the AMV room's (substandard?) equipment can only play MPEG2 and MPEG1 videos, and all my stuff was MPEG4. Why they can't use a standard TV out is beyond me. That's all we use at Archon, and it rocks gonads. Any format. ANY FORMAT. anyway.... I was pissed about that one.

1) The NetStream 2000 is an MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 decoder.

2) MPEG-4 works with extremely high bitrate video, but MPEG-2 tends to look better.

3) The MPEG-2 requirement has been stated in the rules since, oh, I dunno, eternity.

Ahh, so thats why...

I should really learn to pay closer attention to the rules.

O and Flint, your vid "Consequences of War" got into the contest.

[VegettoEX]

1) The NetStream 2000 is an MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 decoder.

2) MPEG-4 works with extremely high bitrate video, but MPEG-2 tends to look better.

3) The MPEG-2 requirement has been stated in the rules since, oh, I dunno, eternity.

Hai. It's actual dedicated video hardware playing back the video, instead of simply "displaying the computer screen."

Huzzah for Hollywood and NetStream.

[trythil]

Did my video get into the contest? o.o I'm guessing not, but I had to ask.

You got in

[TaranT]

1) The NetStream 2000 is an MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 decoder.

2) MPEG-4 works with extremely high bitrate video, but MPEG-2 tends to look better.

3) The MPEG-2 requirement has been stated in the rules since, oh, I dunno, eternity.

Hai. It's actual dedicated video hardware playing back the video, instead of simply "displaying the computer screen."

Huzzah for Hollywood and NetStream.

They (Sigma Designs) also sell a NetStream 4000 ($329) which decodes MPEG4 in addition to MPEG1 and MPEG2:
http://www.sigmadesigns.com/products/netstream4000.htm

[Garylisk]

I burned a bunch of CDs with my AMVs on them, passed them out to random people, tried to get them to play my vids in the AMV room. Appearently the AMV room's (substandard?) equipment can only play MPEG2 and MPEG1 videos, and all my stuff was MPEG4. Why they can't use a standard TV out is beyond me. That's all we use at Archon, and it rocks gonads. Any format. ANY FORMAT. anyway.... I was pissed about that one.

1) The NetStream 2000 is an MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 decoder.

2) MPEG-4 works with extremely high bitrate video, but MPEG-2 tends to look better.

3) The MPEG-2 requirement has been stated in the rules since, oh, I dunno, eternity.

Ahh, so thats why...

I should really learn to pay closer attention to the rules.

x2

[Garylisk]

1) The NetStream 2000 is an MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 decoder.

2) MPEG-4 works with extremely high bitrate video, but MPEG-2 tends to look better.

3) The MPEG-2 requirement has been stated in the rules since, oh, I dunno, eternity.

Hai. It's actual dedicated video hardware playing back the video, instead of simply "displaying the computer screen."

Huzzah for Hollywood and NetStream.

Is it really enough of a quality boost to justify the format limitation though? It's still being output to a projector which is displaying things on a screen. If I hadn't been told any different, I would have assumed straight TV out via SVideo. I couldn't tell any difference.