Jonathan: April 2011 Archives

What with all the bank holidays and such, we’re not taking our own deadline too seriously. So please, if you think you’ve missed out — enter anyway. There’s even time to sort out the paperwork we need. Just.

Meanwhile, we’re putting the finishing touches to the new film archive, and we’ll start publishing films new and old just as soon as it’s ready. Woohoo!

As the deadline approaches we’re, as usual, fielding lots of queries about music. I don’t know, what are you like? Reading the rules at the last minute, tsk. :-)

These two sites are terrific sources of music that you can (mostly) use. If you pick something from these, please keep a note of the page you downloaded from and the name of the track — you’ll need to tell us that information when you upload your film.

• Kevin MacLeod’s free music archive (which, unlike just about everywhere else which says ‘royalty-free’, actually means it).
• Free Music Archive (everything here is free, but make sure the specific license doesn’t include a ‘no-derivatives’ clause. If you’re in any doubt, drop us a query with a link to the track you want to use).

Thursday morning (too early!) — a quick heads-up:

A couple of minor issues cropped up yesterday with the film submission system, which might make it difficult to upload your films. We’re aware, and fixing the problems, but you might want to leave it a little while before trying to send us your film. Fingers crossed, we should have things working again by this afternoon.

Thanks for your patience, and particular thanks to the people who emailed us with details yesterday.

The deadline for submissions to SciCast 2011 is Wednesday 27^th April. That’s not changing. But…

Since we set that deadline there’s been a royal wedding announced, some weird things have happened to the Easter holidays, and more recently this website has had its problems. Some schools have shifted their break so they’re not back by the time the deadline happens, which is unfortunate. So:

• The official deadline is still Wednesday 27^th April. If you want to be sure your film is eligible for this year’s competition, you’ll need to get it to us by then.
• That said, we’re not going to take our own deadline too seriously. if you’re a few days late you’ll probably be OK.

To be honest it’s always been a little bit like this in practice, what with post delays and the like. We’re just confessing to everyone rather than only to those who ask/plead/beg for a little more time.

As guidance, you’ll probably be OK if your film reaches us by, say, 4^th May, you might be lucky if you’re as late as the 6^th. After that is getting distinctly hazy. No promises, but we’ll do everything we can to include as many films as we can — if you do what you can to get your films in as soon as you can.

Fair?

We’re back up and running. Big thanks to James at EngineeringUK for kicking the server and sorting everything out.

We’re pressing on with the new archive system, however, so expect some changes in the coming days and weeks. Which probably translates as ‘Jonathan’s going to break it good and proper next time’, just so you know.

An update on the ‘where have the films gone?’ situation: our web hosts hope to have the film archive back up tomorrow, fingers crossed. You’ll know they’ve been successful if the film player on the front page suddenly starts working.

Meanwhile, we’re pushing ahead with what we hope will be a more complete solution — a totally new film archive. It’ll be a bit of a rush job at first, but since we’ll have access to all the page logic and templates we should be able to tweak things a little. We may even, finally, be able to (whisper it) make the films available for download.

I know, I’ll believe that when I see it, too.

We’re still hacking away at page template code making the new site work at least vaguely, and we’ve just started a new compression render of all SciCast films in a much larger and higher-quality format. Back-of-the-envelope, we reckon compressing this many films is going to take at least one CPU-week. Ouch.

Then we’ll have to repost all the films on the new system. So hang in there, we’re going as quickly as we can.

Besides, you’re all too busy making films for this year’s competition to fret about where the old ones have gone, right?

OK, own up: who broke the website?

It looks like the film archive at planet-scicast.com is down, which in turn is breaking the films embedded on the front page here. We’re not sure whether this is a server issue, or if the site content was set to expire at the end of March, or what.

Hopefully we’ll be able to get some answers from our hosts at EngineeringUK, but they’re unlikely to be at their desks until Monday, so… yikes.

Of course, you’re all too busy making films this weekend to watch previous entries, right? You wouldn’t even have noticed the films were missing if we hadn’t pointed it out. Right? Right? You won’t notice me sloping off here to kick the server, right?

Drat. Bear with us…