That's why I didn't quote it. Come on, don't take this so seriously.

You dont get it, do you?

Hundreds, if not thousands, of people are being treated as though their work means little to nothing.

Have you read the posts here?

A joke they call regional animation competition

I dont know about your team, but my team spent well over a hundred hours working on our animation. I personally drove over 3 hours RT every time our team met.

And you dont think I should take this seriously?

I realize that the animations were underexposed this year, as you can read in the post I made in that thread.Our team spent nearly the same amount of time on our animation, though I can't say for sure. We haven't counted the number of hours we put forth, because we don't care. It's the satisfaction that keeps us coming back year after year.
I don't think you should take the codec so seriously... The point of FIRST isn't to win, but to make progress and learn, which is why I don't think something such as a codec should matter so much, but rather the improvements made during the course of the season.

I agree that the main thing you gain out of this is skill and satisfaction at having produced something good, but I dont think that that is the point. The point is that we made this for a competitiion of animations, not just to boost our skill in 3dsMAX. This matters most for the teams who really did feel they could win, but got confused on the codec thing. I mean, I spent a whole monday where I had been getting 0 sleep that weekend trying to figure out the best codec to use. It matters to us because this is something we created, and we want people to see it. We are proud of our work. You may say this is showing off, but I mean, thats what a competition is kind of about. You might as well say that its not important to care about winning the robot competition.

I was incredibly excited when our team found out we won 2nd at St. Louis. Dont you think the competition aspect only enhances the inspiration and the feeling of achievement that you get?

Once again, I have to say, this is our precious project which is something that many of us have put in hundreds of hours. When one gets to the competition and finds people saying how crappy their animation is(theoretically, no one in FIRST would actually say that) and one knows it would be 20 times better if one had simply compressed it better, wouldnt you feel terrible?


I also completely agree with MAX3dLee about the fact that you expect us to not take this seriously.

Naturally I would, but 20 times better is an exaggeration. I saw one at VCU that had a checkerboard effect and noise over it, and I could still tell that the animation itself had been very good. It's the judges's choice whether or not to discriminate against that. I don't see the why they would... But then again, they are students...Well I understand the worries, but taking it too such an extent as "I will research the procedures for a formal protest." and "The protest I intend to file will be regarding the overall poor administration of the Animation portion of the competition." seem a little too critical for the situation.
All I'm saying is that in the past, we've achieved quality equal to DivX's using regular AVIs and MPGs, and the only noticable difference is the file size. Therefore, I don't see the issue of the codec to be as important as you guys are making it out to be.
I realize that different codecs have their strong points, but I don't see how you could intentionally put the quality so low that it makes that big of a difference.

Look, I really dont think you understand about exactly how codecs work! Maybe in your animation it didnt matter, that's fine, I could see how you would take from your personal experience like that. But I tested out a lot of different codecs including cinepak and indeo and there is a major difference. It really is not something that can be ignored or not taken seriously. Different codecs are good for different things. Some are better for high motion, some are better for low. Some blend colors, and some dont. The thing is, you must find the one that suits your animation the best. Even when I had the quality slider all the way to the max in cinepak, it really didnt work well. One thing I noticed about many animations was how people used the white carpet material that comes with max. This, IMO, does not compress well with any compressor, and leaves a sort of shaky feel when you move the camera. We used the white carpet material(b/c I forgot about the problem), so we knew we would have to find the compressor that affected this the least, because we knew that it would be a major distraction when the animation was watched. If one didnt use these materials or anything else that didnt compress well, one could probably push the quality slider fairly low and still have a very watchable animation. But believe me, no one should carelessly compress their animation.

Yeah, but a formal protest may take it a little too far in this case.

Again, I reiterate, I plan to protest the overall poor administration of the animation portion of the contest - not the use of what may actually be illegal codecs. The issue of the codecs is a symptom, not the sickness.

And one last attempt at describing the issue of codecs.

It's the difference between CD quality audio and 8.0 kHz, 8bit mono sound. You could have the greatest song in the history of the universe, but it's still going to sound crappy and unprofessional at that lower rate and bit depth.

Yes, I want our work to have motion picture quality and if it looks even one pixel less, then it's not good enough for me.

Sorry, that's how serious I am about it.

Like I said, I don't know a thing about post, so thanks for teaching me. :D I feel so enlightened. I had no idea that codecs differed this much...

But I'm still solid on the issue that using DivX was allowed the whole time, and it was only your misreading that kept you from using it. Did you read the PDF file SteveK posted?