for still pictures taken just prior and after the show.
the full show with the choosing of the winners

With less than a week with the new miniDV camcorder, I was ill prepared for the con. Also jumping into DV (Digital Video) editing cold turkey didn't help either.  After trying 3 video editors which wouldn't run on my system, I used brute force and Windows Movie Maker to capture and edit the clips. I stayed up late to capture nearly 8 gigs of raw footage to compress to just 25 megs of online videos. Sadly the quality sucks but driving up the quality means driving up the bandwidth and web space.

As oppose to last year's show I've recorded the judges comments.  I thought they did give a solid performance.  Some of which have done Cosplay Idol before.  The lighting in the room was standard with not additional lighting which made it difficult with the new camcorder. Having Scott McNeil in the dark half of the stage area didn't help.

Cosplay idol is a two camera event since the show doesn't slow down for one second. The mono pod (retractable stick with camera mount) helped only slightly. I still had to steady the camcorder with my hand which made it tiring. Obviously a tripod is a must though there is always no room to setup such equipment. I quickly check with those behind me to ask if I was blocking their view. With the camcorder being so small, it wasn't a issue.

Next time, I will have a second battery and spare tapes and simply hit record and go.  I would have one person in front to capture close ups of judges and contestants. the other would be much further back than I was sitting. (Once again the third row and only seats away from were I sat two years ago.)  If it were possible, I would have stood by the camera guy capturing images for the large screen.  As it was, my LCD screen was being caught by his camera and lucky I was able to move over one seat.

As for a HQ torrent of the show, I've just manage to get the web version up for now. I might have to go to a friend's place to properly re-record the video and edit from there.
 

for still pictures taken just prior and after the show.
the full show with the choosing of the winners