Tsubasacon AMV Contest Rules

Overview

As part of our festivities, Tsubasacon hosts an annual AMV contest. Last year was our most successful contest yet, and we would like to continue providing an outlet for people to express their creative talents. 

1) Review the Rules
2) Submit the AMV Submission Form
3) Mail your CD / DVD or use a file transmission service to submit your video(s)

General Rules

Content: All videos may not be shorter then sixty (60) seconds or longer then six (6) minutes. Explicit lyrics, extreme violence, nudity, or sexual content may be grounds for disqualification. Videos must consist of both animation and music (or movie trailer audio). The video must consist primarily of animated footage (this includes video game, anime, or American cartoons), although you are allowed titles, lead-in sequences and still shots as long as they are less than 10% of your AMV.

Clean animation is recommended. Logos or "bugs" (most commonly DivX and Cartoon Network titles in the corners) should not be present for higher score. Subtitles from fansubs or from official releases may also subtract from your score (unless they have some relevance to the topic of your AMV). You may add subtitles yourself for effect. Audio from a commercial dub is permitted in small quantities but may lose you points if in poor taste; however, sound effects or dubbing you do yourself is fine.

Bumpers: You may have a short (10 seconds max) opening at the beginning of your AMV and short end-credits (30 seconds max). The opening titles should only give a title, studio, or name of the creator. End titles need to have anime(s)/game(s) used, as well as song title(s) and artist(s).

Eligibility: All attendees to Tsubasacon may submit AMVs. If a video has been submitted to other contests, prize-winning or not, we may require you to tell us where/when that video was shown. Videos from Tsubasacon staff and families are ineligible for prizes, but may be submitted to be viewed during the AMV contest screening.

Acceptable Media Formats: Currently we will accept submissions on the following media: DVD±R/RW, and CD-R/RW. Submission on video tape will not be accepted. If submitting on DVD, please burn the file to the disc as a data file. Please make sure files are small enough to fit on a single DVD.

Acceptable File Formats: AVI, WMV, MOV, MPG, MP4 are excepted as long as they can be played by Media Player Classic movie player.

Acceptable Audio Formats: If using MPEG-2, please use MPEG-1 layer 2 audio using the "stereo" setting and whatever bitrate you feel necessary, and not AC3 audio. For other formats, use WMA, WAV, AAC, or MP3 audio.

Video Quality: Make sure your video size is either 720x480 / 1280x720 or 1920x1080 at a frame rate of either 29.97 or 23.97 and encoded with a 4:3 or 16:9 playback flag. (depending on if your video is going to be widescreen or not.  Anything else will be scaled to this size. Interlaced or progressive scan videos are fine. If submitting interlaced, please check your video on a television first to ensure the field order is correct and there are no interlacing artifacts.

Submissions

*IMPORTANT*  Due to the nature of the AMV contest (trying to prepare for it) submissions will not be accepted after October 1st, 2013.  This means no at convention submissions will be accepted, but will be shown during our exhibition showing.

Video entries are limited to two per contestant. If you send a submission with more than two videos, we will only show the first two videos unless told otherwise. A non-competing video still counts towards your total.

Submissions can be mailed or submitted via Internet.

Via Snail Mail:

Tsubasacon
ATTN: AMV Contest
P.O. Box 252
Goshen, KY 40026

Via Internet:

If you wish to upload your AMV via Internet, please upload your file to a service like http://www.ge.tt/ or http://dropbox.com or with applications such as Google Drive https://drive.google.com and email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. a link to your file.

AMV Submission Form

The form can be found here and must be filled out prior to mailing or Internet submission.

Contest

The Tsubasacon AMV contest screening is open to the public. The contest will last approximately ninety minutes. Should we receive more than ninety minutes worth of submissions, all entries will be evaluated and ninety minutes of finalists will be chosen to enter the contest. Multiple entries may not be used, so participants should label their AMVs in number of importance so we don't play the wrong one for the contest.

The contest will be divided into six categories:

• Dramatic / Romance - Sad and or Love Struck AMV's
• Humorous / Satirical - LOL AMV's
• Action / Adventure - Fast / Heroic / Explosive AMV's
• Upbeat / Rhythm - Dance Monkeys Dance! / Pop / Techno / Dubstep / Whatever you kids are listening to today AMV's
• Freestyle / Creativity - For the artists who want to create a unique AMV experience, such as videos that might not be set to popular music or videos that might not have an overall story arc or have changing emotions.
• Movie Trailer - Movie trailer audio synced to anime(s) of your choice. Could be a sad movie or a funny movie but still belongs here.

Entries can only compete in one category. Categories may be removed at the director's discretion. Judges will rank the videos on various aspects and a numeric average will then be compiled. The highest score in each category will be declared the winner for that category.  If for any reason, only one video in a category is submitted then we will have no choice but to move it to the next best fitting category for that video.

The audience will also have a ballot listing all the competing videos and will be asked to indicate their favorite. The video with the most votes will win the Audience Choice Award. In addition, the video with the highest overall judges' score will be awarded Best of Show. Additional awards may be issued at the discretion of the Tsubasacon staff.

After the contest and time permitting, there will be a special screening for any ineligible or non-entry anime music videos.

If you aren't able to make it to the main AMV showing, we will have a reshowing late Saturday night.  And finally, be sure to check out the AMV Contest Awards Ceremony during the Costume Contest intermission where we'll replay the winning videos and the winning editors will receive their awards.