Frequently-asked-questions

MY VIDEO HAS NOT BEEN APPROVED BECAUSE IT HAS BLACK BARS, OR IS THE WRONG ASPECT RATIO

If your video has not been approved, it is possibly due to one of the following reasons;

Aspect Ratio
We need your video in HD, and 16:9 or wider so that we can use it in all media types if selected as the official video. If you want to check your aspect ratio, you can divide the width by the height, eg. the minimum resolution we accept is 1280x720. Dividing the width by the height gives you 1.7778, which is 16:9 (16 divided by 9). Remember, don't include black bars in the resolution width or height though. Read more about aspect ratios here.

Black Bars
Horizontal or vertical black bars are not acceptable. Sometimes, exporting a 4:3 movie to 16:9 simply adds black vertical bars left and right of your footage, this is still a 4:3 video, and therefore won't be approved. If your video is wider than 16:9 (eg. 1.85:1 or 2.39:1) then our transcoding process will add top and bottom black bars so that it plays within our 16:9 player. Never add any black bars, regardless of what resolution you are uploading.

Titles/Credits
We don't allow any titles or credits to appear on the video. There is space on your video's page (when uploading) where you can put credits and extra information. Titles are added by the media outlet that ends up playing the winning video (eg. MTV).

Related categories: Videos Technical Competitions