Awesome editing contest.

Got a little behind but I'm ready to export now. Just wondering what will give the best quality.

My choices on my editor:
.avi
mpeg-1
mpeg-2
h.264 AVC
.WMV
MPEG-4
.MOV

Not sure of the differences between those. I'm leaning toward H.264 AVC, Mpeg-4, or .MOV

edit: the H.264 AVC gives me more options with resolution. Should I go with 720p or 1080p?
Which one should I go with?
 
I did h.264 mp4 720p. I don't think they care, otherwise they would've given us instructions. Just use a common format, I think you'll be cool.
 
Thanks. I got another problem. Some of the clips I use have letterboxes and others don't. Did you guys have this problem? How do fix it?
 
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Well I am about to upload it to their site now. But one thing is making me hesitant. It says the video shouldn't exceed 25 seconds. Mine is 25.18 seconds. Is that too much? I tried to uploading it to youtube and youtube rounds it up to 26 seconds.

As for the letterbox thing, I set the entire project to 16x9 but that doesn't do anything.
 
As for the letterbox thing, I don't know, but I'm personally not worried about it. It's another one of those things that I think if it mattered to them, they would've had specific instructions. Mine is in 16:9, so all of the wider shots have letterboxes. I guess I could've cropped them, but I didn't think it necessary.

As for it being longer than 25 seconds, yes, that definitely matters. They were pretty clear about that, actually. I think you need to make it exactly 25 seconds, not one frame longer, not one frame shorter.
 
Thanks for the help.

I finished uploading it. I decided to go with .m2ts. That's the same thing as h.264 right? I don't know if it's common but that's the one that allowed to me to change the resolution and have custom settings. I also tried .MOV and mpeg-4 (MP4) but I couldn't change the resolution and it looked like crap blown up to 1080p.

The site accepted my format so I guess it's okay.

Also, did you get an email confirming the submission? I didn't.
 
No confirmation email over here, either. Kind of annoying. I've been getting the impression that this contest was formulated at the last second (hence, not many details about video codec requirements, etc.).

Oh, well. It's still an awesome contest. I'm anxiously awaiting the opportunity to see my competition. Can't wait until Saturday!

I'd say good luck, but you'd know I don't mean it. :D
 
By the way what did you guys title your video? I just called it something like "Imported From Gotham City- ChryslerTDKR

And for the description i wrote something like "entry for dark knight + chrysler competition.

Were we supposed to write something unique so people can find our video when voting?
 
Called it "Batman Escapes In Chrysler 300" or something similar to that. Hopefully I did not make my mine too much like Cracker Funks. I could not remember exactly what your video was when I made mine.

My description was something like Batman likes to escape in a Chrysler 300 after a hard battle. I used the chants in the background because I thought they sounded cool. I spent some time on arranging the music and special effects sounds. Did as much as I could considering the limited amount of sounds they had and music. Anyways, sounded pretty good to me.

I forgot to put opening titles in my footage. I also did not notice that the footage did not all match as far as the framing. There was two black bars on some of the footage and on the other there was none. Too late to fix now. The chrysler 300 footage had no bars and the ending title did not have bars. The Dark Knight Rises footage did have bars.

It was kinda hard to make it only 25 seconds. Do you guys think you learned anything form making your edits of this spot? Maybe how to make a teaser trailer for your next project? It is an art form.
 
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CRAP! I sure hope my generic title and description won't hurt me. And I hope there's a way to change it. I wish I knew that we were supposed to be creative with that.

@rockerrockstar

I didn't have opening titles nad my framing didn't match either.

And yeah I learned a lot and have a newfound respect for editors.
 
I don't think title and description are that big of a concern.

Who says you need opening titles?

I hate to say it, but I have no new respect for editors. That entire lot of people are nothing more than sycophants.

;)
 
Here is my title: "A Fire Will Rise". I hope it goes far.

I learned a bit about big TV spot editing from this contest. It was fun to edit and most of the work was trying to get the car and movie seem seamless. It would be nice to have a Chrysler 300 bumper at the end and make it 30 seconds. It's 25 seconds and I guess that's why they call it editing. Overall this is a great video editing contest to work on!

Thank you Cracker Funk for sharing this contest!!!

I hope someone from IndieTalk wins.
 
I'm going to place mine in a new "promotion" thread, cuz I will be straight-up begging people for votes (and I expect y'all to do the same). But I'm also going to post it in here, for the sake of sharing/comparing/critiquing.

Have you guys seen the companion video that the winner will play along-side of?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtCH97rkgV8

I didn't see this video until after I had submitted my cut. And I was glad to see that they're very much going for the idea that Batman fights crime, driving Chrysler. When I first got the footage, I was rather annoyed that there was no dialog. So we had no choice but to make a musical-montage, and the common-sense idea seemed to be to establish a connection between crime-fighting and Chrysler. It seems to me like they wisely chose which "assets" they would release to us, almost guiding us in where they wanted us to take it. I have a feeling most people's submissions will fall along roughly the same lines.

Looking forward to seeing what else is out there!
 
Yes, I was able to see this before I made my commercial. I thought it was a promotional video for the contest. Now that I watch it again I noticed that they really like the speed up and slow down effects. I do like how they used the music for that spot. Also noticed that a flame on the back of the car!
 
It has begun.

If you care to vote for my entry -- http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=41265

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr5LDmyEHH8

I edited sound first. I wanted to open up with the chants, since I find them to be so recognizable. After that, I had a lot of fun editing the music, track by track. And I did some pretty heavy editing.

The one item I felt some trepidation about was whether or not I should include any of the graphics cards that say stuff like "Every Journey has a Yadda Yadda". Ultimately, I just didn't feel it necessary.
 
What a disappointment. Can't find mine. I used the search function and everything. I did not display it publicly.

Must've been the format I sent them.
 
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