Welcome to the Connichi AMV Contest.

Welcome to the Connichi AMV Contest. AMV means Anime Music Video, a music video made of anime scenes, created by fans to enjoy other fans. By now it’s more than 10 years ago that the first Connichi took place in Ludwigshafen and with it our first AMV contest. Considering it’s the editors who have most of the workload, this year again we’d like to invite them to form their own jury and rate each other’s work as part of the exclusive contest. Stay tuned for more details.

AMV means Anime Music Video, a music video made of anime scenes, created by fans to enjoy other fans.

Overall, there are no big changes in the rules. In case of questions arising feel free to send a mail to amv-contest@connichi.de

The deadline expires on July 25th 2012 if you are using mail service or August 3rd if you are sending in via Internet. For more information regarding these points please refer to the rules.

Please send a mail including the following information to amv-contest@connichi.de

Necessary information:

-          Complete real name

-          Nickname if applicable

-          Country of origin

-          Contests you wish to participate in

-           Mode of shipping (postal service or internet)

Optional information:

-          Date of birth

-          Address

-          Phone number

The information provided except for "public" info will be used for internal purposes only. Please notify us if you wish them not to be made public. If not stated differently the information will be used for planning and execution of the 2012 Connichi video contests only.

§1 Conditions for participating

a)      Everybody may partake, if the video was produced by the contestant themselves without third parties employed or material of formerly published AMVs by other parties involved. Refer to section b) for exceptions from this rule.

b)      If several people are involved in the production of a video, this fact has to be stated explicitly. We reserve the right to judge individual sections of this video separated from one another.

c)       We reserve the right to exclude the video from the contest, if the contestant is deemed to be in violation of sections a) or/and b).

d)      Refer to §3 for further information.

e)      Anyone involved in the organization of the contest and/or the convention or the process judging the videos admitted to it are not allowed to participate in the AMV-Contest.

f)       It is not necessary to attend to the convention to enter the contest. Of course anyone not on site will not able to judge as part of the Creator’s Choice Award. Also consider that we will not ship non-cash prizes.

§2 Contents

a)      Any material is permitted. However, most of the video must be comprised of Anime-Scenes. Accordingly no video limited to scenes extracted from video-games will be allowed, there’s a separate contest for that. Be advised, that choosing painfully popular Animes is not exactly useful. For reference you may search YouTube for “[Anime title] amv”, if the number of results has five digits perhaps there are enough already.

b)      As to the choice of music, you are left to your own devices.

§3 Conditions of exclusion

a)      We reserve our right to exclude from our regular programming any item featuring mature content being either erotic or violent in nature. Presentation of these items will be postponed until after 22:00 hours (16+) or 00:00 hours (18+) respectively, depending on the assessment arrived at by the jury.

b)      We reserve our right to remove any video featuring pornographic content or extreme political views from our contest altogether.

§4 Technical issues

a)      The minimal duration of the video is 1:30 minutes (pure running time). It is not supposed to exceed 5:30 minutes in length including trailers, credits and the obligatory black screen at the beginning.

b)      The video has to be sent in a digital format. Requirements are:

c)       The resolution should be between 512x384 and 1280x720. 640x480 or higher are recommended (depending on aspect ratio of course). The use of square pixels is highly recommended.

·         The following containers are allowed: MPEG, AVI, MKV, MP4

·         You may compress your video using: (DivX), XVid, (MPEG 1), MPEG 2 or h.264(recommended)

·         You may compress the audio-stream using: Windows PCM, MP3, AAC(recommended) or AC3 (optimal performance is not guaranteed if you use AC3)

·         Thus, the following formats are interdicted: Windows Media, uncompressed videos, any Lossless Codecs, Ogg Vorbis, Real Media, Quicktime, Indeo, Flash, et. al.

·         Do not send an ANALOGUE tape – please, for god's sake!

d)      IMPORTANT: Please state explicitly, for which purpose a video is intended, by using the following nomenclature:

·         [AMV_$_ID_####]Name[XXX-Version].*

·         e.g. [AMV_C_ID_0000]noir_tournament[presentation-version].avi

·         The $-sign is to be exchanged for X meaning Exclusive Contest and F meaning FFA Contest

e)      Please do not use any special characters or spaces within your file's name.

§5 Distinctive Marks

a)      A distinctive mark is a way to identify the creator of a video be it their real name or their nickname. For example opening or ending credits or a watermark may be such ways.

·         Example distinctive mark: “Connichi Video presents: A Video by Celes”

·         Example not distinctive mark: “Musik: Unreal Tournament OST, Anime: Noir”

b)      Your entry for the exclusive contest may not have any distinctive marks.

c)       However, it is allowed to send a second version containing distinctive marks for presentation purposes. Those two versions of the video must be clearly distinguished

§6 Number of entries and exclusive rights

a)      If you enter the Exclusive Contest, you may send one video. This video may not be published or presented prior to the contest, i.e. no downloads or distribution to third parties and no Youtube.

b)      If you enter the FFA Contest, you may send in two videos, which should be produced between the Connichi 2011 and 2012. There are no other restrictions

c)       No video may enter more than one of our contests.

§7 Going postal

a)      Postal Service:

·         You will receive the address to which you entry is supposed to be sent in a mail after you completed your registration.

·         The CD/DVD containing your video has to be labeled with your real name in its entirety and your Participant's-ID.

·         Write in a fashion that is decipherable.

·         Please keep in mind that the postal service will take their time.  

·         Sending your contribution by mail is not recommended for participants from outside the EU.

·         In case you want your CD/DVD back, please add a stamped envelope addressed to yourself.

b)      Internet:

·         The contact information is being provided after registration. Please confer with them about how you want to send your files

·         Contributing files using the internet can be done via instant messenger, FTP or HTTP (your own server or upload services such as Rapidshare).

·         Links to Youtube or other Flash Video based sites are not accepted because their format is not supported by this rule set.

§8 The Deadline

a)      Mail Service: The deadline expires on July 25th 2012. Anyway the package should arrive at our jury by August 3rd. Please consider the time it takes to deliver.

b)      Participants sending their files via internet have time until August 1st 2011 at 23:59:59 hours CEST. This is the time when the upload must have started and it must be finalized 24 hours later. Confer with us on this in any case!

§9 Evaluation

a)      There are three juries, that can choose their individual winners in each contest:

·         The AFT as every year

·         The creators participating in the exclusive contest and on site on that evening the presentation takes place.

·         A randomly chosen number of people from the audience not involved in AMV creation. Their number is equal to that of the creators.

b)      The AFT jury will pre-select from all entries of both contests.

c)       Assessments made will not be revoked.

d)      The system by which the videos are judged by the AFT jury will not be published.

e)      Critical input, if constructive, is appreciated.

f)       Any recourse to courts of law is excluded.

$10 Presentation

a)      On Saturday night the videos pre-selected will be shown in the grand hall. The mode in which above mentioned juries choose their winners will be announced at a later time.

b)      Videos that were not preselected and thus not shown on Saturday night will be shown throughout Sunday in a video room.