Question. How was this put together? Did you use the DVD set for the master shots and the laserdisc for transitions? That probably would have been best, especially since this was matted widescreen anyway.

Sounds like a great job!

Why would you use a PCM track???

That takes up A LOT of MUCH needed space and to add to that, it's a mono audio track. You should give as much space as possible to the video. I don't think 2 dual-layer discs would do it...considering the OFFICIAL release of godfather 2 alone was 2 dual-layer discs.

Edit: Damn you DFNYC--I spend all this time figuring this out, and you just slap out an answer and beat me by a minute. Heh. Anyways--

You really, really need to drop the PCM audio in favor of AC3, as PCM takes roughly 10 MB of space per minute, and there is absolutely no reason to be using PCM audio for a project like this. I don't know what the runtime of this is, but let's look at the runtimes of the three original films:

Godfather I: 175 minutes
Godfather II: 200 minutes
Godfather III: 170 minutes

Now, assuming this edit runs for roughly the amount of time the three films do, combined, that's 545 minutes. At 10 MB a minute, that's 5450 MB. 545 minutes of AC3 audio at 224 kilobits per second would take up about 915 MB of space, so dropping the PCM in favor of AC3 at 224 would yield a loss of 4535 MB--slightly more than one single layer DVD.

Edit: And having just noted that, according to DFNYC, that this is a mono track, you could cut that 224 figure down to 128 Mono, and that would drop another 450 MB off of the size.

You could drop one DVD from this collection, simply by converting the audio, without even touching the picture. So that takes you down from 5 DVDs to 4 right there. And you could probably afford to do a recompression of the MPEG video--it would take you a year and a day to work with 550 minutes of video, but with noise reduction and some other filters, you could cut this down to 3 DVDs without affecting the video much.

Edit: DFNYC feels that two dual-layer discs wouldn't cut it, let alone 3 single layers, as I allege, but seeing that as it stands now, you're at 5 SL discs, we're obviously not dealing with a bitrate nearly as high as that of the official DVD releases.

The chronological version was? Are you sure? I thought the first time they were "in stereo" was the remasters set.

He's also using 4 different masters and they would all have to match at this point.

And yes, Godfather 3 is a stereo film and completely the same in all released versions on home video (which is why i'm confused about its inclusion here). I would definitely drop it as it serves no purpose.

Question: did you get a copy of the TV version beginning for 2? The version shown on TV is different from any of the home video releases.

Just some thoughts.

Not doubting you...but according to the laserdisc database, the epic version was still mono. Maybe the trilogy version was put into stereo.

What is the alternate Godfather II TV opening?

Although I'm new to the world of fan edits, it seems that this community is to demonstrate the love and respect a fan has in showing how a film has moved them. I'd love to see multiple fan edits of the Godfather series. There are enough dimensions in these movies that one fan's edit will be quite different from another fan's edit, as they would both be different from Copolla's vision. These differences are, for me, a great training tool to see how the same story can be told in different ways, just in the way they are edited/re-edited, and the takes or subtitles used.

--JF

Are you switching from PCM to AC3 then? It would be great to get this down to just two DVD9s!

This isn't a fan edit.

Isn't this just a combining of all known versions?