ThunderAxe31 has asked me to continue my discussion of re-records in this thread from the submission of:
http://tasvideos.org/6312S.html
I am a big on re-record counts, because it shows the effort behind someone doing a TAS. Let me bring up the re-record count for sniq's last submitted any% TAS...it is 369385..roughly 3 times the movie length. Now I've collaborated with sniq on a great deal of his work (mainly to get insight on anything in the future that I might do with SM), and I know that this number is highly reflective of his work. He is not the kind of person that just tries something one time and says, "that's it". In fact, he has done so much testing in single areas and abroad, that it shows that level of details is extreme and the quality of his work is of the highest standard.
We have seen low-record counts from newbies and the lack of quality shows;however, I'm not un-forgetful about the idea that this number can also be bogus (tampered with, or the TASer is just not understanding that his work is making any progess). As with all TASers, the more we TAS...the more experience and understanding of how crucial it is to strive for perfection. This number actually can become a quality factor and give a preliminary look at the seriousness of a submission.
I'm currently working on a TAS that is mostly likely going to be 400K records, when I'm done. If this field was locked out from direct tampering, it will absolutely reflect the effort and time put into...but will not necessarily say that nobody could ever beat it or that it is optimized, but the likely hood would be that it is.