Ah, possibly, but I'm not sure. I mean, people can try, but there's a pretty solid filter to go through.
Actually, no one can say what kind of a 'filter' will happen (or NOT) except the judges, and even then, only at the actual screening event! One noticeable trend (and this can change anytime by whim of any year's panel - their decision, not mine BTW) is that typically any given series only appears once per CATEGORY. So if there are six or seven categories, you might see a DN comedy/parody, a D/N action & effects video, and a D/N serious drama. But just one each. **
OTOH, the if we get clobbered with ELEVEN Death Note AMVs the judges might select one or two 'best of's' in their opinion and hand the rest back to me, saying 'Two total is enough...' That's sort of what happened with the RAFT of Final Fantasy stuff we got last year.
Then of course, if the show doesn't come out subbed in its entirety before the con, that could limit a whole lot of people from making valid amv's (there would be plenty of amv's with subtitles in them, I could bet.)
Making AMVs from subtitled fansubs is tricky but definitely *not* impossible. Three most useful guidelines IMHO:
a. Use footage in-between when people are talking so you can work with the original size & highest resolution,
b. Crop the frames to cut out the superimposed texts, and resize, and
c. If the area where the subtitles appears doesn't change (e.g, two people talking in a boat on a calm lake, with the subtitles appearing at the bottom of the 'water' half of the frame) then you can grab a still frame when the text is off, and then superimpose it over the subtitles.
I expect to be at the mini-con and so, if there is interest I can demonstrate these techniques to people...
- G
**Incidentally, one AMV contest a few years ago ran THREE Trailer AMVs back to back to back, ALL to 'Nadesico' - and the first two were to the SAME Trailer audio. Talk about beating an audience to pudding...