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Just a reminder: the contest closes to entries this Sunday. If you're planning to enter, you don't have much time to do so.

Entering early also allows us to contact you if changes need to be made or there's a problem, so don't delay!

[The Basics:]

Fanime is now accepting entries for its AMV competition. Our rules have been shortened to make it easier to read, but there have been some changes, so please read carefully.

The Basics:


AMVs must be at least 30 seconds, and no longer than 6 minutes.
Up to 3 entries per person/group; only 1 video per category allowed.
NO bumpers, subtitles (unless made by you), watermarks, personal identifiers, titles, company logos or credits.
No AMV Hell-style videos allowed.
Videos that have been sent to prior Fanime AMV contests, altered or not, will not be accepted.
Video must have premiered after July 1, 2014
AMV must contain at least 70% anime, manga, or video game footage.
Must have a minimum resolution of 640x480 and a frame rate of 23.97 or 29.97.
Due April 19, 2015 at 11:59 P.M. PDT


Categories:
Action
Comedy
Drama
Trailer
Upbeat

Encoding
MP4s using H.264/AVC compression are preferred. However, we will also work with AVIs and MPEG2 files. Files larger than 400MB will not be downloaded, so compress your work.

Awards
Awards and Prizes (TBD) will be awarded to the best video in each category, Audience Best in Show and Judges' Best in Show.

Prizes will be sent to winners who are not in attendance following the con.

Disqualification Rules:
Videos containing portions of another editor's video will be disqualified and the submitter of said video will be permanently banned from all subsequent contests.
Participants who submit videos that are not their own will also be banned permanently.
Refusal to provide one's legal name will result in disqualification from the contest.

Judging & Use:
Videos will be prescreened and judged prior to the convention. The judges reserve the right to move a video to another category if they feel it would be a better fit.
Fanime reserves the right to use submitted AMVs during the convention and subsequent Fanime conventions, regardless of Finalist status.

Due Date:

Competing AMVs and their submission form are due by April 19, 2015 at 11:59 P.M. PDT.

Submission Form:
Please go to http://goo.gl/cRhSfe and provide a download link to your video. Streaming sites are not accepted. We can download from a-m-v.org's local server, but remember, no intros/bumpers/watermarks/titles/credits/etc.
If you don't have all of your videos available at the same time, feel free to use the form multiple times. Please contact us if you need/want to replace an entry with a new one or need to give us an updated download link, however.

I would imagine luggage is ok... people getting off the train at the con center needing to get to their hotels would have luggage, right?

I'm going to be that guy that brings steak and tri-tip for my electric grill and cook it there in my room. but personally, I got last year the 7 treasures from 7 treasures, and made it last for a good chunk of it.

Haha, nice!  I've heard of people bringing electric rice cookers and oatmeal, but nothing quite on that level before.  Just curious though, what do you mean by "the 7 treasures from 7 treasures"?  I've never heard of that before.

its a chinese shop on the same strip as johnny rockets, and its the 1 of everything order they traditionally have on ready there for little over 9 bucks. you get a lot of bang for your buck for good quality food.

Is the place actually called "7 Treasures"? I couldn't find it on yelp or google.

Yes please. Preferably one that stays open late. :D

[can call his mom and have her give permission,]

So my cousin is a little scared to ask but me and my 2 cousins are going to Fanime this year and he was wondering if even though he is 17 will he be able to get in by having my other cousin with him who is 21 years old or if he can call his mom and have her give permission, if Hentai night/room whatever it is will be featured this year. Thanks for the help with this question

I'm fairly certain you win the forum forever.

They can barely organize one con and get guests/hotels/etc. up in a timely manner.  Two cons would just end up making both cons a complete mess.

Agreed.

Also there are a few other cons during around winter.  Sacanime, PMX, ALA. So if you really want to go con hopping fly to other parts of the U.S.

There's also Otakon Vegas that just started this year. It's in January (thus far).

Well, you could, if you had say a disabled parking placard IN YOUR NAME, they could look it up back to you via the number on your permit, and thus proving it, but then again it could be fudged.

Can it? If you had to register for a badge, pick up that badge with your ID, and have that name on the placard?

The problem with this is that at least CA placards don't generally have names on them, just ID numbers. So Fanime would need the ability to look up disabled placard IDs to make sure the person using it was actually who it was registered to, or you can guarantee people will "borrow" placards from friends/family to get badges without waiting or prime hotels. And if folks can counterfit badges, they can counterfit placards, especially with months advance notice, so again checking the ID# would be necessary and yet not really plausible. It would also pose a problem for those who have disabled plates, not placards.

I suppose the hotels could refrain from leasing out their disabled-capable rooms except to those who need them, but there wouldn't be enough and I doubt they'd do it.

Sadly, no. Every year Fanime develops a series of images that go with the theme, and they put those on prereg badges. Theoretically if they keep doing what they did last year of having blank badges with labels affixed, you could request a specific badge, but I doubt they'd allow it. Imagine if they did and everyone wanted the hot girl and hot guy badges. They couldn't make people happy and folks would be disgruntled.

Anyway, just enjoy the randomness. Me and my friends have all had years where we love our badges and years where we don't.... but ultimately, as a memento, they'll probably become fonder to ya anyway.

Did anyone get a confirmation email??? Im still waiting on mine!

I got mine pretty much instantly after registering. You might want to call or email housing.

The part that worries me is last year we didn't seem to have ANY of these problems. At least not with the hotel registration. The server didn't crash and the process was smooth. Why fix something that's not broken? :/

To be fair, one big difference is that last year they initially only posted a link to fanime.com and people crashed Fanime's server, not the housing server. Someone eventually leaked the housing address on Fanime's FB page, but everyone else was just getting stuck at Fanime.com. Fanime officials did post the link on their facebook page a short while later, but in the meanwhile, many people with the leaked link had completed reg and were out of the way, and I'm sure part of the crowd that had gotten stuck at Fanime.com had to give up for various reasons.

I was lucky and got the address from FB last year. I was unprepared for the mess this year, but I don't think Fanime is entirely to blame. I'm fairly sure that CMR Housing is a service Fanime hires to set the rooms up, so the blame is with them. And since they run cons like AX too, they should be ready for a huge rush of people.

Overall, the badge buying may help next year. We haven't outgrown the con center, but it sure feels like we're outnumbering the hotel rooms these days...

I notticed that AMD is inside the wiiU, ps4 and xb1... winner much?

on any note, I'ma buy a ps4 when i save up enough money... ps4 is backwards compatible with ps3, right? im pretty sure it is...

Unfortunately, no. You'd think it would be but at this point you can't even play the PS3 digital games you've downloaded on the PS4. (They should be updating it so you can do that later on, but no specifics have been given.)  Moar info heer: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/15/playstation-4-cant-play-old-games-but-backward-compatibility-was-just-a-fad/

Radx888, I'm not going to go into too much detail in my response here, because 1) It wasn't my video you stole from, and 2) I don't want this post to be construed as flaming. While it's good you finally responded and pulled your video from competition, I have to reply to your rationalization for what you did.

To be honest I think our video's are completely different even though I used the same scenes. Which I also tried to argue like how many of you have seen an action AMV where the same footage is used? Yet it's by different editors, and completely different videos, nobody cries about copying each other in that instance.

While I see what you're getting at, your analogy here is just wrong. You're comparing 2 different videos using the same scenes from an anime to what you did. It's not the same. You took footage from matthewgutz, all of which he'd edited to his liking, and threw it into your own video. Your analogy is like if someone sat down, made a collage from a specific magazine, and then someone else sat down and made their own collage from the same magazine and the first guy called it plagiarism. It wouldn't be. But if the second guy sat down, took the first guy's collage and cut out the parts he liked and slapped it into his own collage whole, that'd be plagiarism and that's what you did.

I was just trying to make a romance AMV, and I just saw a different use for the same scenes. But I still spent the time and actually edited it from RAW footage.

Erm, no. If someone edits the footage and you take that footage, it's not raw. It's pre-edited.

I'm sorry it was the same, it was not my intention to rip-off that person's video, I was just so striving to do something different, and I thought I could implement the styles of other AMV editors into my own videos, to which I regret I took that thinking too far.

Ok, this is where you really lose me. You wanted to do something "different", and you literally copied portions of the matthewgutz's work to do something "different"? That makes no sense. If you want to implement the styles of other editors into your own work, learn how to do what they did and do it that way. I'm pretty sure most editors have seen another person's AMV at some point, seen an interesting effect or editing style and tried to emulate that on their own in their next video. They try to recreate it for themselves and learn the skill rather than simply swiping the footage from the original vid.

This is part suggestion and part question.

I was wondering if there might be any chance of a sort of "State of the Con" report from one of the higher-ups PRIOR to Fanime. I realize from the many posts here that most of what goes on behind-the-scenes is top-secret and can't be divulged to the public, so that might cause a problem. However, that being said, I think I speak for many of us when I say that this year's multitude of problems caused a serious backlash with the fans and has a lot of us concerned regarding next year; not just for registration, but all the other burps and hiccups that occurred over the course of the con.

With that in mind, I would personally appreciate (and anyone who feels similarly or dissimilarly, please speak your mind) hearing something- anything- from the high mucky-mucks of Fanime prior to registration opening for 2014. I don't think it's a lot of ask. Plenty of businesses and companies issue letters when something's gone very wrong and they want to reinstill faith in their customers/shareholders/partners. 2013 was a year where a lot of things went very wrong. I realize that fanime.com's homepage currently contains a letter from Milton Le, Director of Marketing, which does touch on a lot of the problems that occurred and attempts to reassure us that things will be done. The problem is, similar reassurance came at the end of 2012 (with admittedly, the biggest problem being registration's backup due to an unforeseeable and uncontrollable power outage) and 2013 turned out to be a much bigger mess. In addition, seens to how we were all asked to send in comments/complaints, someone from Fanime actually addressing the biggest complaints received would be a nice gesture. Some have posted here with concerns that our emails fell on deaf ears (which I personally doubt, but talking to a faceless, nameless webform wall does lack the personal touch.)

I realize this is a difficult request since Fanime cannot divulge certain private information to us, especially for security's sake. But I don't think I'm alone when I say that even something vague being said would be better than nothing to try and encourage the public that improvements have already been set in place. I say this as a concerned fan with more than a decade of Fanimes under my belt who nonetheless already feels hesitant to register for 2014, and that if indeed 2014 is plagued with as many (or more) problems, will most likely not return for any further Fanimes.

Thanks.

THIN WALLS, I expect this from every hotel but this seemed especially true here. Our neighbors were more mannered and quieted down later at night, but the neighbors from the first night kept my friends who stayed in the room very annoyed.

Nobody wants to be a party pooper, I know, but if you're worried about this for potential future visits keep in mind you can call the front desk. The first year I was @ the St. Claire there was a guy roaming back and forth in the hall that confused me and when I went to check, it turned out he was a security guy for the hotel who was looking for a noise offender so he could give them a warning. The front desk is more than happy to get folks to hush up if you need them to.

The setup for the Community Day concert. So cool :' D
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151999665202625&set=gm.1397121197188523&type=1&theater

Is that one of the new rooms in the new wing? If so, I'm impressed. It's huge! Looks almost nearly the size of the floor area in the music hall across the street...

Registration won't open until later, probably very late this year or early next year. Check back on the main site now and then or on facebook, they'll announce when they're getting ready to open reg. In addition, the earlier you registerbthe less expensive it'll be so keeping up with either the site or Fanime's FB feed is a good idea.

While we keep being told otherwise by the officials, considering very little has been posted regarding the concerns with the Cosplay Spectacular this year and no one's bothered to officially post the list of winners/participants/both, it makes it harder to believe that things will be better next year.

pre-printed badges: it was done in the past.. but why not this year? because Fanime wanted the capability for people to choose where they can pick up their badge. (yes, people could have gone to Clockwork Alchemy)

Here's what gets to me about this. The idea of having two different registration locations is a good one, for the convenience of those who come mostly for Clockwork as much as those of us who are mostly there for Fanime. What I find extremely irritating, though, is the fact that Fanime specifically made us choose whether you wanted to pick up your badge at Fanime or Clockwork when you pre-registered and it was never mentioned in the actual line or prior to the convention that you could pick up your badge at EITHER location. I assumed like most years (and I imagine others did as well) that the badges had our names pre-printed on them and therefore if you went to the wrong registration location, they of course wouldn't have your badge and couldn't provide you with a new one. Turns out they had labels and that logic was wrong. All it would've taken was one registration staffer (or heck, the roving info desk who came through a couple times) to simply give a verbal announcement that you could go to the other location and pick it up and I'm sure lots of people would have jumped at the opportunity. Someone, or multiple someones, really dropped the ball multiple times.

And if by chance this was posted on Twitter or something on the day registration opened, that's a good step, but there's also something to be said for face-to-face verbal communication. Or a physical sign. :/

As for hiring staff, we are considering it. But because it is a weekend and a holiday weekend, we may need to pay not just overtime - time and a half pay, but possibly double time. It may become a decision of staffing reg and giving up programming - for example and totally pulled out of my.... is if we need to choose between having two more staffers versus losing a panels room or cutting a video room.

I hope this is noted because sending in a 3rd feedback form would seem excessive, but have you all considered Kickstarter or something else of a crowd-funded nature? If I knew that the money was actually going to go towards hiring staff to help improve the con, or to preserve the panels/video rooms in light of paid-staff hiring, I would totally pitch in some $ and I'm sure others would too, since folks have said that they're willing to produce extra money just to get their badges mailed to them. Little perks could be offered of little-to-no monetary value, like high amounts getting a ticket to the Yamaga party or getting a special little "I donated!" sticker on your badge or something like that.

Alternatively, what about different tiers of "membership" like other cons and the AMV.org have? The higher you pay, the more perks you get and the more you support the con. Higher-tier supporters would have special badges indicating this, maybe some kind of VIP privilege, that sort of thing. Though I realize VIP privileges at most other cons indicates that you're guaranteed to get in to see guests and such which isn't usually a problem at Fanime, but other VIP privileges could be created. Like guaranteed seating for the masquerade, or a fenced off seating section or something for the very highest tier. Kind of like how it used to be done for the AMV editors back in the day.

...maybe I will submit this in a feedback form after all.... >_>