VF48Hours Lockdown Forum

in reply to dramamike:

That must have been an exciting finish then. Outide the finish in Aucks I only saw 2 or 3 teams with the dreaded laptop open and rendering which felt like fewer than last year, but I didn't hang around long enough to see what the overall late rate was like.

Well we turned in late this year (by 1.5mins... -.-) and we've never turned in late before even when we were editing on windows xp in 2011. It definitely seemed there were less turn ins in Gisborne this year. I'm thinking it's because everyone was a little less prepared this year because of the early shoot weekend?

The Auckland organisers said something like "almost everyone made it" after the clock had run out. I didn't hear numbers though.

in reply to themorgan:

It wasn't really.
One team in the last minute (I think Nitro gets that award this year).
None in the last 30 seconds.
No last minute sprints that failed to make it.
A few tears of those with laptops waiting outside...

in reply to dramamike:

A few tears of those with laptops waiting outside.

No one should try to edit on a laptop. I've done it once or twice with like silly little videos while away on holiday and such and they're so damn slow. Last night my short rendered in one minute 27 seconds, which is a good thing because I did 6 or 7 full renders while I tested (by sending to the TV so I could watch on a different screen) and tweaked.

I hope everyone knew about the 'restart your computer before trying to render' quirk, because that makes a huge difference with some software.

We were the last team in Christchurch to cross the finish line, with 30 seconds to spare. The paper said 90 teams made it in, but there must have been way more than that at the launch... does anybody know how many teams entered in chch?

A quick count on the heats list looks like 108.

Alright never mind.

We bombed badly, but are sanguine about the whole thing. Despite the extra hour this weekend the buggy software (Corel VX7 on the PC and Final Cut Pro on Mac - both bought and paid for!) caused huge delays. How can professional editing software reject footage from a Sony PMW-350 you ask? Exactly!

Fortunately Edius came to the fore and had me asking myself why I didn't just use it in the first place.

Having said that, the movie is stunning. I mean we REALLY nailed it. Ya'll are lucky we got to the finish line (after rendering completed) at... 8:30 p.m.

Bring it on for 2015!!!!

in reply to AJ:

Here it is, straight from the source:

"CHCH #48hoursnz stats: 86 handed in on time; 5 late; 3 MIA; 11 out of towners."

Only one team MIA this year in Dunedin, one late (1min) and one DQ-Technical. Great showing all round!

in reply to Section59:

How can professional editing software reject footage from a Sony PMW-350 you ask? Exactly!

Well XDCAM EX is slightly fancy - I'm not sure I'd expect Corel to deal with it, but FCP should. FCP X or FCP 7?

Edius, for all it's faults, will play and edit just about anything.

Big failure from Squint Eastwood this year, I cringe to think of the unwatchable, half unrendered hack job I handed in with seconds to spare being played to an audience.
Can't blame the extra hour as I did my best to not consider it or factor it in in any way.

in reply to themorgan:

I did 6 or 7 full renders while I tested (by sending to the TV so I could watch on a different screen) and tweaked.

such a good tip....will definitely be doing this next year!

in reply to debzk:

such a good tip....will definitely be doing this next year!

Hopefully it helps, but you just never know with these cinema projectors and sound systems. My puppet movie from a couple of years ago has never looked anything remotely like it did in the Academy screen on any other screen I've played it on.

My sound especially will be very trying, really had to ride the levels on the song. :D

Fingers crossed all around, right?

in reply to themorgan:

Hopefully it helps, but you just never know with these cinema projectors and sound systems. My puppet movie from a couple of years ago has never looked anything remotely like it did in the Academy screen on any other screen I've played it on.

My day job is making TV shows look good, and still I basically have to just guess. I have a high quality broadcast monitor, and I grade and finish on that so it looks like I want it, but when I see the end product on air in various uncontrolled environments it invariably looks completely different.

The only thing you can do is make it look good for you, because ultimately there's no way to know how other setups will impact it, and trying to second guess those things is just likely to make things go very wrong.

Wellington rate actually pretty good. Pre-files being tested at 7.35pm on Sunday we had 5 late and 10 MIA who were city-based. Don't know about Out of Towners yet or if there were any issues with files. I believe a few people were going through them Sunday/today and tomorrow :)

in reply to steelpotato:

Oh hey!

So you're not reviewing this year - are you involved in the running of the comp somehow, instead?

in reply to steelpotato:

Cool. I must simply have under-estimated the number of people coming in...

I basically cleared all the crap off my laptop this year. Still using Corel XPS 5. Last year took 5hrs to render. I couldn't believe this year took 1hr 40min. And I spent the previous week cutting old footage and soundtracks and whatever I could to make it over busy for 7 min. Then rendered those to make sure I wasn't dreaming.. or messed something up. I could have played with our final product a bit more re lighting etc. But I was too nervous about something going wrong on the laptop, and rendered the footage as is. Still learning.
PS I'm sure the guy at the end of the Auckland hand in was a set up.