The cosplay contest took placed in a small room off the main floor.  Since it was small and regular room lighting, trying to find a safe place to record the video proved difficult.  Being my second event with the miniDV camcorder I let the tape roll. For the most part, I edited out the parts where the contestants talked to the judges. 

A problem arise with the start of the tape which glitched the video when capturing. At first I thought the heads were dirty and was reluctant to continue until I found a proper cleaning tape. It ended up being the tape was too tightly wound and wasn't making proper contact.

It is always a good idea to blank the first 30 seconds of tape with lens cap on so if there is any initial problems with the tape, you won't loose video.  Also get only magnetic type cleaning tapes. Do NOT use cloth cleaning tapes, wet or dry. The fibres will get caught in the heads which will lead to expensive manual cleaning bills later on.

All videos encoded with Windows Media Encoder 9

The cosplayer did not want her picture on the internet.

My impression was they all were winners. Hopefully next year's cosplay contest will be more organized though there were technical difficulties for this year.