Submissions open 25 & 26 March | How to submit a vid

[condnsdmlk]

Submissions for VidUKon 2025 will open early next week \o/ If you've registered for this year's con, you should receive an email either on Tuesday or Wednesday (25 or 26 March) containing details about how to log in to the new platform. 

Before we get into how to submit a vid, just a quick note on which browsers to use to ensure you get the best out of your con experience. Our platform is new and we haven’t been able to thoroughly test it on a wide range of browsers, so we would recommend Firefox as your go-to.

Browsers that should also work: Chrome, Brave, Edge, Vivaldi

Browsers that may struggle (but may also be fine, try it out!): Safari, Opera, others not named here

Browsers that will struggle and that we don't recommend: Firefox mobile on Android

If stuff looks broken, before you let us know, please check if you have the latest browser version installed. Speaking from our own bug testing experience over the past few days, updating the browser will fix quite a lot of things!

Below are instructions on how to submit a vid (or three!) to VidUKon 2025. 

Eligibility

You must be registered for VidUKon in order to submit a vid. If you haven’t yet registered, you can do so at vidukon.org. Once you’ve registered, you will be emailed a temporary password to log in to your vidukon.org Dashboard, which is how you will submit your vid. This process is not automated, so don’t be alarmed if it takes some time to receive the email, though we will do it as quickly as possible.

There are three submission-based vidshows: Vidder’s Choice, Premieres, and the Themed Premieres show. You can submit up to one vid to each of these shows. As implied, submissions to the Premieres and Themed Premieres shows must be new vids that have never been posted publicly or shown at a con or similar event. Conversely, Vidder’s Choice vids cannot be premieres. Additionally, Vidder’s Choice submissions must be no longer than four minutes and thirty seconds in length.

Technical specifications

Please follow these if possible, as it makes it easier for us to set up the virtual vidshows. However, we do not want these specs to be a barrier to submission for anyone – if you’re having trouble, please contact us.

File format: MP4

Video codec: H264

Max video bitrate: 7-8 Mbps

Max resolution: 1080p 

Audio codec: AAC

Max audio bitrate: 256 kbps

If you don't know how to follow these guidelines: If your vid is roughly under 350 MB and definitely not 4K, go ahead and upload it. If it’s not 4K but well over 350 MB in size and you don’t know how to reduce the file size, please contact us.

Please do not upload 4K vids. Things would likely break, one of them being your vid upload! Even if things don't break, we don't support 4K on the platform, so your vid will be converted to 1080p and will likely end up with bleached colors, since that tends to happen with automated conversions from 4K to 1080p.

How to submit your vid

Once you get your password, you can log in to vidukon.org and change your password. Please note that for now, the name you enter in the vid submission form must match your username. If you chose a different username when you registered than the name you vid under, you can change it by clicking on “Profile”. We plan to change this in the future but don’t have the capacity to do so this year.

To submit, click on “Dashboard”. Your dashboard will display what vidshows you can upload to and also lets you manage existing submissions. Click on “Submit”. This takes you to the page to enter the vid details. If the source(s), both visual and audio, are not yet in our new database (which at this point is very likely), then you won’t be able to add them on this page, but you can do so later. 

In the description field, please enter a brief description of your vid. This doesn’t have to be comprehensive; for example a common approach is to choose a lyric from the vidsong that is particularly evocative of the vid, but it is also fine to write something like, “A Dylan G. character study” or “All the f/f ships in Xena”. Be as creative or straightforward as you like, but please keep this brief as every vid description has to fit in our printed conbook!

Please tick any of the mandatory content notes that apply to your vid. For custom content notes, you may provide additional detail about any of the mandatory notes as well as add any non-mandatory notes, e.g. warnings for spiders or snakes.

At this point you can hit submit even if you didn’t enter any sources or audio due to them not being in the database. From here, you can click “Enter Sources” (add new visual sources that aren’t yet in the database), “Enter Audio” (add new songs or other audio not yet in the database), and finally upload the vid file. For the sources, you can click “search metadata” to get search results from IMDB and similar, this will help you find the year of release, full title, etc. Adding sources and audio in these pages automatically adds them to your vid.

Finally, don’t forget to upload your vid! You can add new uploads, and edit all other details of the vid, up until the submission deadline.

The vid upload takes a moment. Let it do its thing and don't close the tab or browser. If it takes longer than ten minutes, it's probably failed and you can contact us about it. You won't irreparably damage anything by closing the tab while the spinner is going, but we may have to remove all the vid data and make you resubmit. We don't know yet how the site will behave with multiple people uploading at the same time, so please be patient with the site, especially if you're uploading close to the deadline.