FAQs: Videos

We're looking for high quality videos that have the potential to become official videos.

We're all about creativity and pushing the boundaries in terms of what music video is and what it can be. There are no real creative guidelines on what we're looking for, but it should be high quality, creative, innovative and entertaining. The winning video becomes the official video for that song/brand/project and will usually be intended for broadcast, so keep that in mind when making your video.

Make sure your video is shot in 16:9 or wider, and shot in HD (720p or 1080p) so it can be used across all of today's media platforms.

We don't want lip syncing videos, family/travel/stock footage set to music, or shaky hand-held phone-camera videos - in fact we probably won't publish them.

Generally, we never accept videos comprised of public domain or stock footage. Read more about that here.

We moderate every video to check not only for appropriateness, but also for quality of concept, creativity and film making. We apologise in advance if your video isn't published because it isn't deemed of sufficient quality to potentially be used as an official video, but we have a responsibility to each of the artists, labels and brands we work with to make sure the videos being made for their music and published on our site are of a high quality.

Take a look at videos nominated for the Genero Awards to get an idea of the quality we're looking for.

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Some of the best videos don’t use any footage of the artists. So use the fact that no footage has been provided as an opportunity to have complete creative freedom for your music video.

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Even though your friends would probably find it funny to watch you, basic lip-syncing videos aren’t what we’re looking for. So apart from not winning it probably wouldn’t make it past our moderators because we’re really focused on quality videos, not quantity.

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Log in to Genero, then go to your profile. Click on the thumbnail of the video you want to edit. In the "Video Details" section, click EDIT DETAILS, change the text as required, then click UPDATE.

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Log in to Genero, then go to your profile. Click on the thumbnail of the video you want to edit.

Play through your video and take note of the time when a frame of your video appears that you want to use as the thumbnail.

Enter the time it appears into the box under the thumbnail (in the form MM:SS) and click the UPDATE button. Wait a moment while your new thumbnail is generated.

The thumbnail of your video is the image people see when they first visit your video page, as well as the image used for social sharing sites like Facebook, Pinterest and Google+. Try and use an evocative image that gives the best impression of the feel of your video.

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When the video is playing roll over the video player you'll see a <> button in the top right corner. Click on that and you'll see a popup with the Embed code. Select it, right click and "copy" and you're away!

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In short: make great videos! We choose the videos to showcase on the Homepage based on the quality of the video and the appeal to our audience. We’ll also take into account the videos that are getting rated the most highly and watched the most. No amount of lobbying or money (well maybe a really large amount!) will improve your chances so just keep trying to improve the quality of your videos.

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You can upload an updated edit of your entry and you'll keep all of the votes, views and comments your previous version had.

Just follow these simple steps;

- Login to your account
- Click your PROFILE link at the top right corner of the site
- Choose your video from the thumbnails on the right hand panel
- Click the REPLACE/EDIT button
- Follow the steps from there

If you want to upload an entirely separate and different entry, then don't use the process above - you should upload a new entry from the competition page.

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At the moment we don't allow downloads of original videos so make sure you keep your own copies of any of your videos you've uploaded. However, if you've lost your version let us know and we'll do our best to help if we can.

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For music videos: your video mus be the full length of the provided song. You can also include footage before and after the track starts or ends if you think it adds to the overall music video.

For brand videos, promotional videos and treatments: each project description will detail the expectation for video length. Please ensure you read the brief carefully.

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The laws for filming in public differ between countries and even cities so we can't give you a complete answer on this. You'll need to check with your local film commission or similar body. Here are a few resources though that might help as a starting point.

• UK Film Council: http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/publicspaces
• Paris Film Office (in English): http://www.parisfilm.fr/uk/guidelines.html
• Australian Copyright Council: Filmmakers and Copyright infosheet
• New York: http://www.nyc.gov/html/film/html/permits/shooting_home.shtml
• California: http://www.film.ca.gov/Permits/index.html
• Seattle: http://www.seattle.gov/filmoffice/film_permits.htm

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No, please don't add any credits in your video. You can use the Description and Other Credits areas to provide any further details about your video and other contributors. If there are credits appearing in your video you'll be asked to remove them and resubmit it.

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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 (up to, but not wider than 2.39:1) 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). If your video is wider than 2.39:1, please letterbox your video to 16:9 prior to upload. Read more about aspect ratios here.

Black Bars
Vertical black bars (pillar boxing) or black bars surrounding your video (window boxing) 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 won't be approved. If your video is wider than 16:9 (eg. 1.85:1 or 2.39:1), our transcoding process will add top and bottom black bars so that it plays within our 16:9 player, or you can add them yourself so that it is uploaded as a 16:9 file.

Titles/Credits
We don't allow any 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 (not credits) are acceptable if they are an integral part of the creative idea.

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It is easy to change your video thumbnail to something that you like, just follow these steps;

- Login to Genero.tv
- Choose EDIT PROFILE from the top dropdown menu
- Click the thumbnail of the video you want to update
- At the bottom of the page, you will see an EDIT THUMBNAIL section, just put the time in minutes:seconds, and click EDIT THUMBNAIL, eg. 01:35

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It's our view that Second Life videos aren't generally suitable or up to the standard to become an official music video. We don't rule them out completely and do publish some given they represent a different medium, but in most cases, we won't be publishing them.

We feel that they aren't in line with what artists and labels are looking for, unless they are very creatively done and in consideration of the song.

The way projects run on Genero.tv is that being published is basically the first round of submissions - like being accepted into a film festival. We moderate the videos on behalf of the artists and labels we represent and many other videos have also not been published for the same reason. You can read more about that here.

We apologise if your Second Life video hasn't been published, and we appreciate the time and effort you would have spent making your video.

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ALL winners (and possibly some finalists) will be required to upload a broadcast quality version of their file, usually via FTP. If you are unable to supply a broadcast quality file to the client's specifications, you will be disqualified from winning or being a finalist.

Use the below specs as reference only - we will contact winners directly with the exact specs as required:

Codecs: Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) [preferred], Avid DNxHD or DVCPro HD
Scaling: Content may NOT be upscaled from SD
Frame size & rate: 1920x1080 (Progressive) [23.98, 29.97 or 25], or 1920x1080 (Interlaced) [29.97 or 25], or 1280x720 (Progressive Only) [23.98 or 29.97]
Color space: ITU-R BT.709
Audio: Stereo LPCM in either Big Endian or Little Endian, 16-bit or 24-bit, at 48kHz (Audio levels should remain constant at -6db as much as possible. Please prevent audio levels going below -12db.)

Top 10 reasons (of many!) for immediate rejection of a broadcast file;

1. All text must be TITLESAFE regardless if it is for online use only or not. (See below for details)
2. “Apple ProRes 422 (HQ)” is NOT “Apple ProRes 422”, if ProRes, must supply (HQ)
3. H.264, MPEG2 and MPEG4 are NOT supported file codecs.
4. Audio must be in STEREO. If both the L and R audio are identical, it is TWO CHANNEL MONO and will fail. (See below for details)
5. Audio as 44.1k is NOT supported; it must be 48k. AAC is NOT supported, it must be LPCM,
6. When delivering 5.1 AUDIO, the channels must be clearly named and labeled (either on the tape or the filenames).
7. 4:1 CADENCE is a failure point for Long Form content. (See below for details)
8. Content cannot be PILLARBOXED.
9. Audio and video must be properly SYNCED on all video content.
10. FIELD DOMINANCE issues resulting from reversing the wrong field (upper/lower) first.

Title Safe
Title Safe is a term that refers to the zone of a video frame where all of the titles and graphics applied are completely visible without being cut off. Videos need to be Title Safe in order for all text and graphics to be displayed completely within the viewing frame of a video. All content must be in title safe to be considered archive-worthy, REGARDLESS of the current intentions for its use. It may be meant for online use presently, but that can easily change in the future.

Two Channel Mono
This occurs when both the Left and Right channels are identical to each other. The audio coming from the Left and Right channels must NOT be identical. This should be checked on a stereo-meter as Final Cut will falsely define anything with two audio channels as stereo.

Mixed Frame Rates
Mixed Frame Rate issues occur when different types of source footage recorded using different frame rates are edited together before they are converted to a single, unified frame rate.

4:1 Cadence ( Long Form Content: Immediate Failure)
4:1 Cadence means you have 4 progressive frames of video, and every 5th frame is a repeat of the 4th frame. There should be no repeated frames at all. This issue is often the result of a 23.98 frame video being converted to 29.97 incorrectly. When done correctly, you will see 3 unique progressive frames followed by 2 interlaced frames. Content should be kept native to the frame rate at which it was shot. This also can occur when interlaced content is tagged as progressive.

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Some Genero competitions offer video assets for you to incorporate with your own original footage. Current competitions, and links to their video assets, are below.

We are providing an H.264 file for the Linkin Park competition, but the winning filmmaker will be required to swap this out with a ProRes file which we will supply. If this will be a problem for you, please contact us before you start your project, and we can provide you with the ProRes file. Please only request it if you can't swap out the H.264 later. You should also familiarise yourself with this FAQ in case you win and need to produce a broadcast file.

LINKIN PARK - BURN IT DOWN
H.264 zip file, 736MB (use right click and save-as)

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Because the intention for a selected video is to be used commercially, and the ownership rights to the selected video are to be transfered to the artist/label/brand/agency, we generally do not accept the use of stock or public domain footage, although we do reserve the right to apply discretion.

While some stock footage is cleared for commercial use, the issues of rights ownership and restrictions with licences mean that ownership transfer is generally not possible. Public domain footage generally does not transfer ownership at all.

For the above reasons we require that your video footage is original, created and owned by yourself, and able to be transfered to the artist/label/brand/agency in the event your video is selected.

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The view count on video pages only updates a couple of times an hours; it doesn't update in real time.

Check your page once a day - or every couple of days - and you'll see the view count increase.

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Absolutely, yes!

As per project terms, Genero filmmakers retain full ownership of their video footage if they are not chosen as as winner. If you feel that footage from a previous project fits with another potential project then you may certainly create a new edit from your existing shots - you own that footage after all!

For an example, the winner of M83 - Steve McQueen was a re-edit of a previous Genero submission, which was itself a re-edit of an incomplete short film. The Steve McQueen video now has over 1,000,000 views on YouTube!

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