Movie not approved; unclear about reason...

Z.x · 01-23-2007, 01:23 AM

Hi, I submitted a movie several days ago, then was notified yesterday that it wasn't approved due to the file size being too high for its playtime, which was; 540 MB, 14 mins.

I've send a PM back to the moderator, and a long PM to Uzbeki explaining my reasoning for the bitrate being high and how hard I've worked in the past few months on the editing and rendering, with the intent to release something higher quality than normal. Also I'm curious why some other videos with a similar bitrate have gotten approved, ex: Decimator V1 and V2, while mine was refused. I haven't gotten a reply to either of my PM's yet.

I'd like to point out that in those videos, the description points out that they are trying to "push the standards a lot higher than every other WoW movie" and "raise the bar to a fully professional production standard and show people that machinima and gaming movies are still something not fully explored with a very large audience", etc. One of my primary intents was something similar; to present something of higher than average quality and editing. So, having my video refused tells me that maybe the quality and editing isn't worth the file size? Or certain people get privileges? Or there is something else? I'm still not sure, and extremely frustrated because of this.

The work that went into this has spanned a few months, and was difficult with such low hard drive space (I'm on 2x 60GB drives) frapsing at 1152x864 and editing at that resolution with the raw files being 30-50GB total, then trying to render it was a pain; kept getting memory errors and other rendering errors, part of which I resolved by seperately rendering different sections of the video, which I also rendered at different bitrates (with the credits being lowest) to reduce file size. I also cut off the last 5 min and put it in a seperate file as a bonus, to further reduce file size, since it was different than the rest of the movie. The original full video at the high quality I wanted, was over 1GB total. So I thought that bringing this down to 540MB would have made it acceptable to WCM, especially since I see other videos like this get accepted.

My problem with reducing quality even further is that there is already some pixelization in some scenes of the video, and if I reduce the bitrate even further, it will be worse... if I reduce the resolution (since lower res needs less bitrate), then it instantly becomes overall blurry...and looks like an 'average' video, which goes against my intent to 'present something of high quality'. I don't know if only I'm able to notice this, but changing the resolution from the original, really destroys the quality. I've tried literally hundreds of different rendering settings with dozens of codecs, and used whichever gives the best quality/file size ratio for my resolution... if I knew this wasn't going to be accepted, then I wouldn't have frapsed everything at 1152x864 and edited it so much, even using some advanced/unique effects that are rarely used in other videos. So all my months of hard work has gone to nothing? Even though I used the quality of other published videos as reference on what would be acceptable?

I'm not sure what to do at this point and very irritated at these occurrences.

stormrager · 01-23-2007, 03:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Z.x

Hi, I submitted a movie several days ago, then was notified yesterday that it wasn't approved due to the file size being too high for its playtime, which was; 540 MB, 14 mins.

I've send a PM back to the moderator, and a long PM to Uzbeki explaining my reasoning for the bitrate being high and how hard I've worked in the past few months on the editing and rendering, with the intent to release something higher quality than normal. Also I'm curious why some other videos with a similar bitrate have gotten approved, ex: Decimator V1 and V2, while mine was refused. I haven't gotten a reply to either of my PM's yet.

I'd like to point out that in those videos, the description points out that they are trying to "push the standards a lot higher than every other WoW movie" and "raise the bar to a fully professional production standard and show people that machinima and gaming movies are still something not fully explored with a very large audience", etc. One of my primary intents was something similar; to present something of higher than average quality and editing. So, having my video refused tells me that maybe the quality and editing isn't worth the file size? Or certain people get privileges? Or there is something else? I'm still not sure, and extremely frustrated because of this.

The work that went into this has spanned a few months, and was difficult with such low hard drive space (I'm on 2x 60GB drives) frapsing at 1152x864 and editing at that resolution with the raw files being 30-50GB total, then trying to render it was a pain; kept getting memory errors and other rendering errors, part of which I resolved by seperately rendering different sections of the video, which I also rendered at different bitrates (with the credits being lowest) to reduce file size. I also cut off the last 5 min and put it in a seperate file as a bonus, to further reduce file size, since it was different than the rest of the movie. The original full video at the high quality I wanted, was over 1GB total. So I thought that bringing this down to 540MB would have made it acceptable to WCM, especially since I see other videos like this get accepted.

My problem with reducing quality even further is that there is already some pixelization in some scenes of the video, and if I reduce the bitrate even further, it will be worse... if I reduce the resolution (since lower res needs less bitrate), then it instantly becomes overall blurry...and looks like an 'average' video, which goes against my intent to 'present something of high quality'. I don't know if only I'm able to notice this, but changing the resolution from the original, really destroys the quality. I've tried literally hundreds of different rendering settings with dozens of codecs, and used whichever gives the best quality/file size ratio for my resolution... if I knew this wasn't going to be accepted, then I wouldn't have frapsed everything at 1152x864 and edited it so much, even using some advanced/unique effects that are rarely used in other videos. So all my months of hard work has gone to nothing? Even though I used the quality of other published videos as reference on what would be acceptable?

I'm not sure what to do at this point and very irritated at these occurrences.

Okay first off all what codec are you using to encode your movie in and second, what settings are you using for that codec?

Z.x · 01-23-2007, 03:45 AM

I've fully rendered it in both DivX and wmv; done many samples in all other codecs I have right now, except paid ones like CoreAVC, and wmv always turns out to be highest quality at lowest file size. I rendered it all at the original res (1152x864), since like I said, changing it adds a lot of blurryness, and my intent from the start was to use this resolution without changing it. First 5 min 20 sec are at 5M, since most of that section has part of the top and bottom screen cutout and needs less bitrate to get good quality. Next 6 min are at 6M and the quality at some parts still looks lower because there's alot of sped up content. Then the last few mins are at 3M; credits (and some clips while credits scroll). All were using Bit Rate VBR.

stormrager · 01-23-2007, 05:01 AM

Try rendering using Dvix at HD profile presets set at 5 and see what happens. Oh and by the way have u uploaded it to filefront yet?

Z.x · 01-23-2007, 05:19 AM

yes it's on filefront already. Would take another few days if I'm to rerender, reupload, and resubmit, etc, but I'll try some sample renders at those settings in a few mins and see how it turns out.

Z.x · 01-23-2007, 06:19 AM

Tried Divx High Definition Profile and it kept erroring, then tried 1080HD profile and it worked... but at preset 5 it turned out very pixelized (would need to be 640x480 or lower I guess), then at 10 it turned out slightly better than the .wmv version, but much higher file size (80MB per minute).

I'm not sure if it's possible reducing the file size even further without making it look like the 'average' video, which is against my intent; I want to present my work at high quality. I don't think I should be forced to further reduce it, if there's other videos being accepted at this kind of quality, and I'm really P'd off that mine is being refused. Will have to get an answer from the admins I guess, which I'm still waiting on...

Valamir · 01-23-2007, 10:01 AM

Until you receive a reply from the Admins this matter should be left alone. They will answer as soon as possible.

01-23-2007, 01:23 AM	#1
Z.x Member Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 31	Movie not approved; unclear about reason... Hi, I submitted a movie several days ago, then was notified yesterday that it wasn't approved due to the file size being too high for its playtime, which was; 540 MB, 14 mins. I've send a PM back to the moderator, and a long PM to Uzbeki explaining my reasoning for the bitrate being high and how hard I've worked in the past few months on the editing and rendering, with the intent to release something higher quality than normal. Also I'm curious why some other videos with a similar bitrate have gotten approved, ex: Decimator V1 and V2, while mine was refused. I haven't gotten a reply to either of my PM's yet. I'd like to point out that in those videos, the description points out that they are trying to "push the standards a lot higher than every other WoW movie" and "raise the bar to a fully professional production standard and show people that machinima and gaming movies are still something not fully explored with a very large audience", etc. One of my primary intents was something similar; to present something of higher than average quality and editing. So, having my video refused tells me that maybe the quality and editing isn't worth the file size? Or certain people get privileges? Or there is something else? I'm still not sure, and extremely frustrated because of this. The work that went into this has spanned a few months, and was difficult with such low hard drive space (I'm on 2x 60GB drives) frapsing at 1152x864 and editing at that resolution with the raw files being 30-50GB total, then trying to render it was a pain; kept getting memory errors and other rendering errors, part of which I resolved by seperately rendering different sections of the video, which I also rendered at different bitrates (with the credits being lowest) to reduce file size. I also cut off the last 5 min and put it in a seperate file as a bonus, to further reduce file size, since it was different than the rest of the movie. The original full video at the high quality I wanted, was over 1GB total. So I thought that bringing this down to 540MB would have made it acceptable to WCM, especially since I see other videos like this get accepted. My problem with reducing quality even further is that there is already some pixelization in some scenes of the video, and if I reduce the bitrate even further, it will be worse... if I reduce the resolution (since lower res needs less bitrate), then it instantly becomes overall blurry...and looks like an 'average' video, which goes against my intent to 'present something of high quality'. I don't know if only I'm able to notice this, but changing the resolution from the original, really destroys the quality. I've tried literally hundreds of different rendering settings with dozens of codecs, and used whichever gives the best quality/file size ratio for my resolution... if I knew this wasn't going to be accepted, then I wouldn't have frapsed everything at 1152x864 and edited it so much, even using some advanced/unique effects that are rarely used in other videos. So all my months of hard work has gone to nothing? Even though I used the quality of other published videos as reference on what would be acceptable? I'm not sure what to do at this point and very irritated at these occurrences.

01-23-2007, 03:45 AM	#3
Z.x Member Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 31	I've fully rendered it in both DivX and wmv; done many samples in all other codecs I have right now, except paid ones like CoreAVC, and wmv always turns out to be highest quality at lowest file size. I rendered it all at the original res (1152x864), since like I said, changing it adds a lot of blurryness, and my intent from the start was to use this resolution without changing it. First 5 min 20 sec are at 5M, since most of that section has part of the top and bottom screen cutout and needs less bitrate to get good quality. Next 6 min are at 6M and the quality at some parts still looks lower because there's alot of sped up content. Then the last few mins are at 3M; credits (and some clips while credits scroll). All were using Bit Rate VBR. Last edited by Z.x : 01-23-2007 at 03:52 AM.

01-23-2007, 10:01 AM	#7
Valamir Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: MS, USA Posts: 789	Until you receive a reply from the Admins this matter should be left alone. They will answer as soon as possible. __________________ http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1298/...076d39cf_o.jpg WarcraftMovies.com FAQ

01-23-2007, 05:01 AM	#4
stormrager Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 156	Try rendering using Dvix at HD profile presets set at 5 and see what happens. Oh and by the way have u uploaded it to filefront yet?

01-23-2007, 05:19 AM	#5
Z.x Member Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 31	yes it's on filefront already. Would take another few days if I'm to rerender, reupload, and resubmit, etc, but I'll try some sample renders at those settings in a few mins and see how it turns out.

01-23-2007, 06:19 AM	#6
Z.x Member Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 31	Tried Divx High Definition Profile and it kept erroring, then tried 1080HD profile and it worked... but at preset 5 it turned out very pixelized (would need to be 640x480 or lower I guess), then at 10 it turned out slightly better than the .wmv version, but much higher file size (80MB per minute). I'm not sure if it's possible reducing the file size even further without making it look like the 'average' video, which is against my intent; I want to present my work at high quality. I don't think I should be forced to further reduce it, if there's other videos being accepted at this kind of quality, and I'm really P'd off that mine is being refused. Will have to get an answer from the admins I guess, which I'm still waiting on...