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So, any word yet on what the standards this year will be?

Rufflebutt, AKA Jessie Pridemore, because I still owe her a drink.

Lexa Doig has played:

- a cryonicist or Jason Voorhees-ologist or something of that nature in Jason X;
- a warship's AI in Andromeda;
- a medical doctor on Stargate SG-1;
- a medical doctor who is also an alien on V; and
- a medical doctor who is also a time-traveler on Continuum

That's more nerd cred than Sigourney Weaver and Jewel Staite put together! She's pretty much Queen of the Nerds, and I think it's time we made it official with a coronation ceremony. If you can get her (and preferably Michael Shanks, too) to come, I can bring the crown.

Also, I'd like it to be a surprise, if possible. Ideally, she wouldn't know that we were calling the event a "coronation ceremony" until she actually showed up and looked at the event guide, and wouldn't know that we were using the term literally until she actually saw the crown. Her reaction would make one HELL of a Youtube video!

Okay. The reason why I'm jumping on this so early is that I'd like to circulate a sort of rough draft and tweak the video according to the feedback that I get, so that the version that I submit to Fanimecon will be as polished and complete as possible... and I'd rather not have to scrap the Premiere Project file and start all over again from nothing if the resolution or PAR will cause issues.

No, I'm not at all interested in making videos larger than 1280x720. I'm interested in making a fullscreen, standard-definition video and I need to know:

1) How it will play back if I make it at 720x480 with rectangular pixels, and
2) How it will play back if I make it at 640x480 with square pixels?

The answers to these questions depend entirely on how you merge the square-pixel footage with the rectangular-pixel footage. As I asked in my last post, do the 720x480 videos with rectangular pixels get squooshed to a 3:2 aspect ratio with square pixels? Do you resize them to 640x480 with square pixels? Will a video done in 640x480 with square pixels be played back at a 6:5 aspect ratio with rectangular pixels because you're expecting it to be 720x480? Do the final spliced-together videos use one of those weird container formats that allow different parts of the video to have different framerates, different pixel aspect ratios, etc.? Or what?

The easy answer is, yes, all the finalist videos are spliced together into one file. It's easier for the coordinators and the staff & volunteers who run the program. The show is rendered out at 1280x720. Smaller, 4:3 videos aren't stretched but just fill up the space they naturally would and remain 4:3. This is pretty practice common for AMV competitions.

okay so how do you get rectangular pixels to play nice with the square pixels? Do the 720x480 videos get squooshed to a 3:2 aspect ratio? Do you resize them to 640x480? Or what?

Can I get an answer soon? I'm about to begin rebuilding one of my videos in Fanimecon-compliant form and I need to know how much wiggle room I have.

From the official standards:

Video:

MPEG2, AVI and MP4s accepted.
Frame rate should be either 23.97 or 29.97.
Please use resolutions of 720x480 or 1280x720. Higher resolutions will be scaled down.
Please compress your video- don't send us your original uncompressed copy. While we don't have a limit on filesize, we would prefer to not have to download 500MB+ videos!

Audio:

• 192 Kilobits per second or better
• Choose stereo over joint stereo for best quality
• Sample at 44.1Khz

Now, here's what I don't get. The only reason I can imagine for having such uniform standards is that all the videos get spliced together into one large file. BUT if this is the case, then the 720x480 videos wouldn't mix with the 1280x720 videos. On the other hand, if every video gets its own file, we could have 48khz audio, weird resolutions like 752x320, PAL/SECAM framerates, whatever.

So what's the deal?

EDIT: also, is there an unofficial requirement that these be ANIME music videos, or can I send in my Star Wars music video and Aliens music video?

Normally, the only music videos that get shown at Fanimecon are either fan-made Anime Music Videos or awesomely bad Japanese official music videos.

And now for something completely different.

I've been working on a little project... a tribute to nerd girls everywhere... well, I'll let the video speak for itself: https://vimeo.com/103047577

Is this something that you'd like to see played on the main screen as a special event?