Ways to get your run rejected for video quality

Don't do these things. If you're curious about the reasons behind them, discussion is here.

Capturing

• DVD recorders: recording on the incorrect quality setting. You must use at least SP (2-hour) quality; XP (1-hour) is preferred. If your run doesn't fit on one disc, then pause the game and change discs. The time won't be counted against you.
• Capture cards: capturing incorrect resolution/framerate. For standard definition, NTSC is always 29.97 FPS and 720x480. 30 FPS and 640x480 is also acceptable if your card only allows those. PAL is always 25 FPS and 720x576. 704x576 is also acceptable.
• Both capture cards and DVD recorders: failing to record both channels of audio. This is important because sometimes there are sound effects on only one channel. Obviously, this doesn't apply to NES, Sega Master System, or other systems that cannot produce stereo audio.
• Capture cards: capturing to a lossy codec (video or audio). Audio should be uncompressed (PCM) or otherwise lossless (e.g. FLAC). Video should be one of the following: Lagarith, HuffYUV, TechSmith Screen Capture Codec (used by e.g. Camtasia), FRAPS codec. You need a fast, reliable hard drive to write the data, because there will be a lot of it. Once you capture, then you can use, for example, Anri-chan to encode the video. Encoding to a lossy format while capturing kills the quality.
• Capture cards: capturing interlaced video in progressive mode. Otherwise you get this.
• Capture cards: capturing interlaced video to a lossy colorspace. Basically, don't use YV12. H.264/DivX are always YV12, another reason you can't use them to capture. Lagarith's options window lets you select other colorspaces. YUY2 is good. Otherwise you get what we call chroma ghosting when you deinterlace (after capturing).
• Capture cards: recording overpeaked audio. You have to manually adjust the audio so it's not too loud - the software won't do it for you. You can tell if it's too loud if the volume level indicator touches the top at any time during the recording.
• Game Boy Player: Recording without the "sharp" screen filter.

Encoding

• Deinterlacing: We have a whole section in the KB on this. Basically, you have to understand what interlaced video is if you're capturing interlaced video and not using a DVD recorder. Anri-chan handles deinterlacing for you.
• Aspect ratio: If your material is 4:3, then don't resize to 16:9 and claim it's "widescreen," because it's not. It just makes people look like they gained a ton of weight. Anri-chan handles aspect ratio for you.
• Codecs/bitrates: Not using H.264 for the video codec, AAC for the audio codec, and MP4 for the container and the correct bitrates for the quality (Low, Medium/Normal, High, Insane, X-Treme Quality). Anri-chan does all this for you.
• Framerates: Do you know what framerate your game runs at? Also, the correct framerate is different depending on the video quality (Low, Medium/Normal, High, Insane, X-Treme Quality). Anri-chan does all this for you.
• Mono audio: not using one channel or not copying the audio to both channels. Anri-chan does this for you if you say yes to the "NES" question.