Discussion: Matrix Machinima Contest

Iranman, if you wish to read it in that manner be my guest but in context what they're talking about it is the entry process...observe:

"Should the Contest be terminated or cancelled prior to the stated expiration date, notice will be posted on the Website, and, at Sponsor’s discretion, potential Winners may be selected at random from among all non-suspect, eligible entries received prior to the termination or cancellation. Entries that have been tampered with or altered will be deemed void. The use of any system or agent to submit entries in connection with this Contest is prohibited and will result in disqualification. Entries generated by script, macro or other automated means will be void."

What I believe they're saying is that they don't want people to macro up a "submission a day" or a "vote a day" or even worse a "flood the entry system" macro to botch up the entry process. In my very unofficial opinion, they're not talking about demorecord since that's clearly within the bounds of normal CoX usage.

But that's just me.

Todd

I'm not planning on letting that stop me. If they don't like it, they can disqualify me, but I'm editing democode and they can deal with it.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

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I'm editing democode and they can deal with it.

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daaaaaaaaang, you go girl

Honestly it's the "or other automated means" that makes me feel pretty good about it.

I am still not demo recording simply because I have had no success with it so far.

Well I guess I might try as I don't want to go through and get another Mayhem mission as I kind of got killed too early and had no time to finish what I needed.

I have a tech question: FRAPS captures in .avi, is there a way to pull those .avi files and work them in Final Cut on Apple?

well i couldnt contacvt them to ask exactly and the only macro and script i know of is demoediting and macros made in game .also they said entries generated by script generated to me means to create. i just didnt want to take the chance of being disqualified for some stupid little loophole they stuck in the middle of rules .and if im wrong then my vid coulda been better . .i had plans of using statesman lady liberty and lots of other characters some rarely seen in game .I wish i coulda contacted them ,anyway video is almost done ,man i thought it would be fun but staying up till 6 am isnt fun .lol

OK i sent them an email to confirm .if i can use it i still have time to tweak video woot .Ill let you guys know what they say

Yeah, for some reason I've been pretty unsuccessful at getting any official reply on anything although others have had better luck.

I agree it's better to be safe than sorry. Hopefully they'll reply to you with good news.

Todd

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I agree it's better to be safe than sorry. Hopefully they'll reply to you with good news.

Todd

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What 8baller said. :-)

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I agree it's better to be safe than sorry. Hopefully they'll reply to you with good news.

Todd

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What 8baller said. :-)

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.....your name is Todd too?

I did get a reply from the contest guys after several days wait over a weekend. My last request (clarifying ownership rights when using voice actors) was sent Tuesday, but no reply yet.

Ya know, if these guys were just more responsive, the quality of their entries would be a lot better. I think that GrandConjurer's entry would have been quite different if he hadn't been concerned about the whole "no violence" rule.

BTW: Timing of my entry is at 4:17 now and I'm still tightening fractions of seconds here and there. This is like giving birth! "I can see the head! Push!!!" LOL

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I have a tech question: FRAPS captures in .avi, is there a way to pull those .avi files and work them in Final Cut on Apple?

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I don't know what formats Final Cut accepts, but I assume it takes MPEG. Maybe a free trial of a AVI-to-MPEG converter like this one will work for you.

BTW - AVI isn't really an encoding scheme like MPEG or WMV. It is actually a wrapper around the actual encoded video. I don't recall which codec FRAPS uses, but in addition to the AVI wrapper, you have to deal with the codec it is wrapped around. I only mention it because some codec implementations are better than others and quality can suffer if you use a third-rate codec.

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BTW: Timing of my entry is at 4:17 now and I'm still tightening fractions of seconds here and there. This is like giving birth! "I can see the head! Push!!!" LOL

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I...I don't wanna do this anymore....

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BTW: Timing of my entry is at 4:17 now and I'm still tightening fractions of seconds here and there. This is like giving birth! "I can see the head! Push!!!" LOL

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I guess that your last resort, if you just can't cut anything else out, would be to increase the playback speed by about 7% or so to get it in under 4 min.

7% is pretty negligible and would only be visible to players that know the animation timings and whatnot.

I know that it's not a good solution, but it could be a last resort anyway.

This video is fighting me all the way - and not in a good sense. I know what I want to film, and I know how I want it to look, but I swear, not being able to use the music I want is making me look at it like, "This is not really mine."

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

{grunt}{pant} 4:04...

That speed increase thing just might work. I just hope it doesn't effect the voices. If that works and it's a boy, I'll name it Vorac.

3:59 and 28 frames!!!!! WooHOOO!

Now I can get back to tweaking demorecordings and matching the video to the audio. That's easy compared to cutting out material that I really liked. I hated to cut the line where the "villian" rants about how anyone that doesn't submit to her will be "subjected to exotic and needlessly complicated forms of execution."

Anybody given any thought as to the actual final resolution they're going to create these at. The ONLY rule we have...or guidance for that matter...is less than 200M. I'm preeeeettty darn sure I'm not going to get anywhere near 200M in my 3:20 clip.

I'll speak out first...I'm going standard rez TV 720 x 480. Either an MPEG or AVI format. Avi may be a little more standard.

Todd

Mine will also be 720x480, but not sure which format yet. WMV, AVI, or MPEG is most likely.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

When I create stuff for YouTube, I normally use Ipod MPEG-4 (640x480). My 4 minute vid is currently genning at about 63 megs.

According to the stickied topics on the GameTrailers site, they accept .avi, .mov, .wmv and mpeg. They get converted to slightly higher than 320X240.

I'm also reading posts about problems with XviD or Dvix codecs on that site, so act accordingly.

I am editing mine in 720p but I am thinking that I will bump that down to 720x480 with the video still being widescreen. Ever since I started working for a firm doing graphics work, I have been using .mov files so that is what I plan to export to.

Gratz star on getting it down to 4 minutes!

I'm going for the standard 720 x 480 as well. My rough cut is just around 30mg as a WMV, I didn't see anything about video format so I hope WMV is acceptable.

I'm at the point now where I'm trying to see if I've done everything I wanted to do. Hmm.

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.....your name is Todd too?




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Only on Thursdays.

Ok they wrote me back demoediting is allowed wooohooo my movie is gonna be twice as good now .But only 10 days left only other problem is length my movie is about 6 minutes long gonna have to find stuff to cut out arggg .ok enough babble gotta get back to it ty all for your input

I am starting to doubt my video and I haven't even finished converting stuff.

Now I am behind because as I was about to exit the mayhem I was on specifically to record some stuff, my computer gave me the blue screen of death and the demo file is empty.

That sucks, mayhem. If you need any help redoing it, let me know.