Submission instructions

Before submitting

  1. Be sure your movie meets the movie rules and the guidelines.
  2. Verify that your movie works. Do not submit movies that even you can't view!

The top line

We only want movies that are interesting to watch.
Failure to comply will result your movie being rejected.
Please ensure your movie is good. Do not waste the judges' time with movies that have obvious mistakes ― read the guidelines!

Filling the form

Submitting movies is done at the Submit Movie page. This page explains how to fill the submission form. It is very important that you read it.

Game name

Please write the official name of the game. For example, if you are submitting a movie for the game Super Mario Bros., write Super Mario Bros. Do not write Super Mario, SMB, Mario, or Mario Bros., since the names may be confused with other titles.
If the game has a Japanese title (or other non-Latin writing system), write the most well-known romanization. The ROM name should indicate the correct name.

Game version

Please detail the version of the game. Accepted variants include:
Some unusual variants you are not likely to run across also exist. If the game has multiple revisions, please indicate the revision too. For example: “USA r0” or “USA r1”.
The choices are listed in the left-hand list box of the submission page. You must choose one choice from there. Do not write it in the game name.

ROM filename

The ROM filename may provide hint of what is the version of the game. In the Good Tool ROM set, the filename encodes most details of the game version, for example: Final Fantasy III (U) (V1.0) [!].smc
Please include the file name extension (.smc, .nes ...) even if your operating system has been configured to hide it from you.

Author's real name

Please write your real name in this field. Abbreviations are OK. The purpose of this field in together with the nickname field is to protect you from being confused with other people who use the same nickname.
Non-English authors: You can use the writing system of your native language, for example, Cyrillic if you are Russian, kanji if you are Japanese, and so on.
Please don't write a false name in the field. If the administration of this site somehow gets to know that the name is false, your submission will be rejected.

Author's nickname

Whatever nickname or handle you are generally known in the internet. The administration of this site believes in permanent nicknames. A good permanent nickname is one that nobody else will ever use.
An example of a bad nickname: “Naruto92” (models a famous anime character)
The purpose of the nickname is to identify the author of the movie. We do not recommend submitting anonymously. If your nickname is too generic and you don't provide your real name, your submission becomes essentially anonymous.
If you provide your non-abbreviated real name, you do not need to provide a nickname.
Please use only alphanumeric characters in your nickname. Do not use only numbers. Special characters, such as these are not allowed: #&!+%@. Do not use any Unicode characters in your nickname.

Movie file

Our Movie Rules page lists all the allowed key-input movie file formats. You may not submit files of any other types than listed on that page. Changing the file extension will not help.
Please compress your movie file into a ZIP file before sending. We do not accept any other formats!
Include only the movie file in the ZIP file. Nothing else!
Make sure the movie file in the ZIP has no subdirectories in its path, even if the ZIP program you use saves subdirectories by default. The path should be empty.

Description

It is very important that you describe your movie in the following ways.
Note for Dolphin (Gamecube and Wii) submissions: For these movies there are quite many factors that can affect sync. The Dolphin movie file stores a bunch of settings affecting sync on its own (see DTM), so you are not required to provide them. Please include the following in your submission additionally to the ones stated above:
The submission text uses a special text formatting system. Use * for bullet lists, ! for headings and put an empty line between each of your paragraphs. Do not begin lines with spaces.
It is recommended to write long descriptions in a text editor first.
Things to remember:
Additional things you can include:
Things you do not need to write:

Troubleshooting

You need to be logged in to submit movies. The login procedure is explained at the login page.
If the submission fails, do not send your file by e-mail! Instead, read the movie rules and if it doesn't answer your problem, ask in the discussion forums or the #tasvideos IRC channel

After submitting the movie

Your movie will appear in a few places:
Particularly important is the discussion forums. When you submit a movie, a topic will automatically be created for your submission. It allows people to comment on your movie and vote for it. You are encouraged to follow the discussion and answer questions that may come up after submitting the movie.
If you click “watch this topic for replies” at the page showing the discussion of the movie, the site will automatically e-mail you a notification when someone comments on your movie.
Eventually, a judge will decide what to do with your movie. Basically, it will either be rejected or accepted, but there are some other status messages you might see:
Note that judging the movie may not happen immediately. Sometimes, movies may be published in a few hours after submitting, and sometimes, they sit in the list for over a year before a decision is made.
Judges are only humans, and they too have preferences and they might not always have time.
If you notice a flaw in your movie, or submit a new version, please cancel your old submission[1]. Click "Edit" (at the bottom of the page of submission), then change status to cancelled.
Please append a short comment to the submission explaining why you cancel it.

Tiers

We have 3 tiers a movie can be accepted to. If the audience likes the movie ("Yes" votes outweigh "No" and "Meh", positive reaction in forum posts), it is accepted for Moons or Stars.
If the movie is found boring, it can be accepted for Vault, but only if it does not contain speed/entertainment tradeoffs of any kind (no damage, pacifist), and is a plain time record. Only 2 types of goals are acceptable for Vault: fastest completion time (any%), and full-completion (such as 100% or best ending). If you are not sure the game would be well received, don't include time sacrifices. You can also post WIPs on Forums to collect the feedback and determine the audience tastes.

The bottom line

A “submission” is a candidate for a movie that will be published on this site.
We do not publish movies that break our Movie Rules.
We favor movies that follow our Guidelines. We only want interesting movies!
Users who abuse the submission mechanism may be banned by the discretion of the administration.

[1] Updating submitted movies

If you later notice that your movie needs some minor changes, such as 10 frames of more input to reach the actual ending, you can request the submission file to be updated without having to cancel and submit a new movie. Such requests are made personally to a judge. This chance is only possible if the movie has not been judged or published yet. Send the admin of your choice the following information:
Do not omit any of the information.
Because this operation requires a staff member to personally update your submission, it is greatly recommended that you ensure that your submission is perfectly right before submitting it in the first place.

SubmissionInstructions last edited by Noxxa on 11/1/2015 10:25 AM
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