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vidukon_cardiffIf you have your vid for either show ready to go, here’s what you need to do with it!
(I know this post is a little long but I promise it’s pretty easy. Do give us a shout if you get stuck though! We’d much rather take the time to give someone a little advice than miss out on showing great vids!)
How to upload your vids
1) First of all, you need to have an account on the VidUKon site.
Just click Create Account on the homepage, fill in the relevant details and log in. (At this stage, if you want to submit to Vidder’s Choice and you haven’t yet registered for Attending or Supporting Membership, you’ll want to head over to Registration in the menu at the left of the page and do that first.)
2) Once you have an account, go to Upload in the menu on the left. Select the show you’d like to upload a vid to. (You’ll need to click Next at the bottom right of the page to get through each stage.)
On the Video Details page, fill in the title of your vid, a description/summary, the source(s) you made it from (ie, the TV show/movie/comic/whatever), and its duration. On the next screen, fill in the music title and artist. Then, on the next screen, your name (as you’d like to be credited) and email address (as well as your website and/or blog if you’d like.) Tick the box for any applicable warnings, and fill in additional info for anything under Other.
3) Next you’ll see a page which asks you to choose how to upload - browser, FTP, or link to files. My personal recommendation is FTP. It takes a few minutes to set up but over the years I’ve found it the best and most straightforward, plus it’s the easiest way to see when your file has successfully made it over to us.
If you’d like to try that option, click Upload via FTP, then download and install Filezilla:
https://filezilla-project.org/
It doesn’t take long! Once it’s installed, open it. You’ll see some boxes to fill in across the top. In Host put “ftp.vidukon.co.uk”, and in Username put “anonymous”, then click QuickConnect. Some stuff will scroll by. Don’t worry about any error messages you see.
Now you’re ready to send over your vid. If you’re uploading for Vidder’s Choice, you can upload as mov, avi, mp4, m2v, mpg or divx. For Premieres it’s a little more complicated, see further down this post for instructions!
When you have the vid you want to upload in the right format, make sure the filename is identical to the filename supplied on the Upload via FTP page - it’ll look something like “vidderschoice_test_test”. This helps us organise things behind the scenes. In the Local Site menu on the left of Filezilla, find your vid and double-click it, or right click and select Upload.
You’ll see the upload’s progress bar at the bottom of the screen. Once the file has moved, it’ll show up under Successful Transfers in the tab at the bottom of the page.
4) Once you see that, check the box on the Upload via FTP page that says “I confirm that I have FTPed my video file(s) with the name [filename]”. You can then move on and choose whether you’d like your vid to be in the virtual con - if you do, fill in your embed code from YouTube/Vimeo/wherever and a link to the vid (on YouTube or AO3 or Tumblr or Dreamwidth or whatever). If your vid is passworded, add that in.
5) Then just click through and hit Save if you’re happy with everything! The website should thank you for submitting your vid.
If you’re not sure whether your vid arrived safely, please check with us, via Twitter or email. We’d hate to miss out on your vid because it didn’t get uploaded correctly and nobody knew about it!
How to get your vid in the right format for Premieres
For Premieres, vids need to be in this format:
MPEG-2 (.m2v) and the audio encoded as a separate wave (.wav) 48 kHz 720x480 resolution NTSC format, 29.97 framerate 5500-6500 kpbs bitrate (NOT higher) 4:3 (if vid isn't 4:3, it has to be letter boxed to show in 4:3 fine)
If you get stuck on any of this, please let us know, we want your vid! But here’s the easiest way to do it. (Bear in mind that I’m on Windows and don’t know how this works on Mac!)
1) Download a great little program called Llamaenc2 HERE. (With thanks to AbsoluteDestiny for creating it!). Install it, open it.
2) Click on Choose Vid, find the vid you want to convert. Choose the top option in each dropdown in Settings.
3) Take a look at the preview on the right to see if it looks ok and not squashed or anything. (You can scroll using the blue slider to look at different shots.) IF it looks good, you’re in luck! You probably don’t need to change anything. Choose a file name and output directory, then click Convert.
Once the conversion is finished, watch the resulting vid through to check it looks ok. (The video and audio will be separate files. If you struggle to find a way to open them concurrently, I know Windows Media Player Classic will play them together automatically if they’re in the same folder.) If it looks good, go ahead and upload both video and audio according to the instructions above!
If any of the above causes problems, for example if the vid looks squashed (the most likely issue), tinker with the Aspect Ratio setting and the Crop and Resize radio buttons until it doesn’t look squashed, then try converting. And again, give us a shout if you get stuck or you're not sure!
