All Hallows Fest

This sounds cool. I'm in. Script done, location secured, time is short :)

I'm worried about the theme, though. Maybe my film idea is not "dark" enough? I think it's eerie, and involves some supernatural activity -- does a theme of "darkness" imply something malicious, malevolent, or sinister? Anyone care to opine?
 
Doesn't have to be malicious in nature, I don't think. You should be fine. It's pretty open with a suggested leaning towards Horror-ish, Halloween-ish story, but not required. Just a dark overall feel/theme.

Later,
Jason
 
If you're concerned, you could PM Barry_S with the basics of your idea and let him advise you as to whether it'd be appropriate for the fest.
 
does anyone know what the file size limit is gonna be? I'm going to put my vote in for 50 mb, i think you'd be able to get a nice quality 640x360 file w/good audio at that size.
 
you still might have to get a little creative with your compression. I just remember it was difficult to get a 640x360 file for spyfest (6 min) under 50 mb. I think with 5 min, it will produce good quality 640x360's or in your case, a great quality smaller video.

tip - adjust your sound compression, it takes up a lot of space sometimes.
 
I rendered with Premiere CS3 using its Adobe media encoder. (480x240) around 8.5 megs per minute. Quite happy with results. When it opens with quicktime I enlarged it a little with no pixelation.
 
Upload info will be announced soon (not meaning today, or even this week) as we get a bit closer.

You can pretty much bet that it will he an H264. File size is still to be determined. 40-50 megs probably. I know we've got plenty of mirror space this time, so Barry and Larry may make it 50 megs, but it's up to them.

On exporting to h264: You should be able to get a nice quality 640x360 file to come in around 50 megs. Another thing to check about is what audio settings are you using. This can eat up a lot of unnecessary megabyte's if you aren't careful. Try going lower quality as long as you are still happy with the sound if you are having trouble with filesize.

I think my BTS was like 85 megs and that was over 10 minutes long. I did it when my qt export was messed up even and all I could do was set the audio and the bitrate (which was 500). I was quite happy with the quality of the export.

Later,
Jason
 
Great news, quick question Jason, any ideas on the actual audio format and settings that you used when exporting the h264 file? Or if there are suggestion on a good setting that would be also very much appreciated. Thank you.
 
I'm not the best person to ask, but I have used something like 24bit floating point, 24,xhz 16bit mono. and then in options I choose little endian. Sound is pretty good with that. I have toyed with some others (like apple lossless, etc) but not a lot and don't really have any filesize comparisons for you. But, I do know that you can save a lot of space based on what settings you use for your sound, and still have perfectly fine audio.

Later,
Jason
 
My BTS was over 10 minutes and was 85 megs @ 640x360 and I was greatly hindered at the time I encoded it by quicktime conflicts. I could only choose a set bitrate, single pass, and tweak my audio... I've since gotten that fixed...

But, I have often made 5-6 minute 640x360 h264s that are what I would consider to be pretty nice quality that are all 50 megs or less.

Jason
 
Okay, I'm a little confused. In order to post pics on your thread, you have to have a URL link, which means the pics have to be on the net somewhere, right? Is that considered promotion??
 
No. You can't publicly promote your film outside of DVXuser. If you don't have a link to the url of those pics anywhere else, then you aren't promoting it. You are just storing the files for posting... Make sense?

Also, you can use the member upload center here and upload the pics to one of the DVXuser servers for posting.

Big difference between storing pictures on your hosting space so you can post them here, and storing pictures on your hosting space and then posting links to those pictures on other sites. It's the posting of the links that would become promotion.

Later,
Jason
 
Thanks a bunch, Jason. That answered my question perfectly. I was really worried there for a minute.

Also, I went to the Member Upload page and it denied me access. Do you have any idea what that's about?
 
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Okay, I'm a little confused. In order to post pics on your thread, you have to have a URL link, which means the pics have to be on the net somewhere, right? Is that considered promotion??

There are many different "hosting" services out there.
In my case I can host images on my own server. I sometimes use a hosting service like Photobucket or Flickr. Unless you are placing your images on websites that "promote" such items, you are simply having your photos "HOSTED" in a location for hot linking.

:nads:
 
Did I just miss the part where it said whether or not we could post trailers here? I think they stopped doing that a few fests ago, but I can't remember. Also, when can we post our BTS footage? Thanks
 
The rule reads...
Films may only be promoted on DVXuser.com before screening and no actual footage from films may be screened prior to the DVXuser screening. No promotion on external web sites is allowed until after the screening has been completed.

My interpritation of that would be that Traliers are ok, provided they don't include any footage that's in the final cut.

But please check with Barry_S on this one to be sure before posting.

- Mikko
 
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