I'm exporting my 5.1 sound for HP1 now. This is the easier of the two, as there were only seven scenes to restore. HP2 has 18 scenes, though I think I only put 16 in.

This would have gone much faster had I saved all my original files. I've gone back and started from scratch to get the 5.1 audio. I will preserve this one on Dual Layer to keep the video untouched, but the SL will likely be the one to get out there.

Muxing 5.1 for HP2 while I sleep tonight. Once I get some new discs in, I'll circulate these two through regular channels.

Working on this extended Azkaban cut. I've been able to reinsert four of the five scenes after converting to Anamorphic (now that I know how to do that). I'm a little concerned about the Common Room scene, as it needed a precursor to set it up. This cut scene shows all of Gryffindor in the common room in the middle of the night, with Ron having awoken to the sight of Sirius in the room.

I Frankensteined together a scene featuring clips of Lupin's dialating eye intercut with a couple of shots of Sirius from elsewhere in the film. It's only a few seconds, then cuts to Ron waking up from the "spiders" dream. It makes his awakening more like a dream, but in reality, Black was right there in the room looking for ... well, we know who in the end. Point is, I'm not sure my intercutting dream sequence comes off well at all.

I considered cutting the scene drastically short and reinserting it after the Castle is locked down, but (a) you lose all that good Sir Cadogan footage by doing so, and (b) Scabbers is noted as being missing. This is way too early in the film for that plot point. The scene is better off being restored between Hagrid returning from Buckbeak's trial and Harry reading the Marauder's map in bed. It sets up why Harry was up so late studying the map, sets up why Peter Pettigrew is on the map, etc. etc. It's a good scene, but very incomplete without a proper setup to the scene.

Meanwhile, I could use the help of somebody great at voiceover work who is familiar with the movie. I want to get three words into the film as described in my first post in this thread. Somebody that can do the same voice that Oldman did. When he shouts "The map never lies!" I want to add "We made it!" immediately afterword. If anybody (especially you Brits) can record a believable version of this line to match the movie, I can mix it into the track with very little effort. These three words make all the difference between a great film and a perfect film.

edit: A clip of this cobbled edit is here. Feedback is appreciated

Not sure if anybody is reading these or not, but at least it makes a good running blog of what I'm doing.

With HP3, I recorded (using all the professional equipement I own) many takes of my best impression of Sirius Black, but the edit just didn't sound believable to me. So I'm nixing adding that line. Oh, to have the original film elements. Three words Alphonso! Just three words!

With regards to the Common Room scene, I tried to cobble together the intercutting footage mentioned above, but it didn't have the impact it needed as Ron awoke. For the audio, I tried mixing the "Come Out, Come Out and PLAY!" line with one of Ron's screams as The Grim dragged him beneath the Whomping Willow, but too much ambient noise (and music!!!) in the center channel kept me from getting a clean edit. It was a good idea, but hackey in the implementation. So I nixed the idea altogether and came up with a different approach.

I then took the unmolested scene and hacked a couple of large chunks from it. I removed Ron's dialogue and the McGonagall/Sir Cadogan/Neville dialogue from the scene. Placing it elsewhere, it now starts after Dumbledore's dream monologue and starts with McGonagall assuring the Gryffindor's that Sirius Black is gone but will probably try to return again. Cut out the Crookshanks bit between Ron & Hermione (because that comes much later in the story line), and have Hermione sit by Harry who is brooding into the fire about how Sirius was here, close enough to touch, and he could have killed him. Cut to blackness for about 10 frames as the music leads out, then cut straight to the falling leaf and Sir Cadogan's introductory scene. After this scene, then cut to Snape barging in to teach in Lupin's absence. This edit abutts the two deleted scenes together into one larger deleted scene and ties up the plot points introduced pretty nicely.

With regards to the Great Hall deleted scene after the first trip to Hogsmeade, I added a fun sound effect when Harry eats the candy that Ron brought back from town. Whatever was supposed to happen was left undone in the deleted scene, the palette open. So I searched for an appropriate sound effect that works extremely well.

I'm generating my 5.1 mix right now. After I clean HP2 off my drive, I'll mux and burn HP3 and then get started on the new book. Woo hoo!!!

Dark_Jedi, your corrected Ep 1 is coming to you via another source. I'm hoping it'll be there soon.

As for the HP movies, I hadn't planned to do the pyramid so soon after the last big push, but I suppose that's certainly possible. It will be going to my two US leads anyway, so if there is interest, we may do another chain. I'll gauge interest in email once the Ep1 corrections have all been received and the pyramid is straightened out and moving again.

Once you have them in hand, please let others know they're available. I'm too swamped to engage in distribution these days.

Many thanks. For anybody creating covers of my home-brewed works, here's a logo you can use that's a riff on the THX logo.

Enjoy.

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that's better

For NTSC, Open them in VirtualDubMpeg2, resize to 720x480 using Lanczos3 resize algorithm, and crop 60 pixels from the top and from the bottom (this just trims some of the black bar). Save as uncompressed RGB AVI. Then load the AVIs into TMPGEnc (or whatever your favorite MPEG-2 encoder is) and generate as a 16:9 DVD.

The audio is in 2.0 so you'll need to convert to 5.1 if you want it to mesh with the 5.1 of the main movie. Even if you just leave the other channels blank, it'll get the bitrates and file types to match.

For PAL, I think you merely need to remove 38 from the top and 38 from the bottom (and of course, encode in PAL). Visit videohelp.com, as threads in their forum have discussed this I'm certain.

I wanted to take a moment to publicly thank Dark_Jedi for doing some much needed QC on my edits. I did a really lousy job of QC, taking certain things on faith with a lot of these non SW edits. The result was Harry Potter 1 having a nasty glitch that had to be corrected (really, really, really bad, not just a little audio dropout). Fortunately it hadn't been "circulated" before it was discovered.

Anyway, he's watched a ton of my stuff over the weekend and given it all thumbs-up. I want to thank him for being a dedicated couch potato. As a writer and as an editor (of the written word) I know that you can never proofread your own work successfully. Having Hardcore Legend and Dark_Jedi do some valuable proofreading has allowed me to make my projects better.

Working on Hannibal next. I think the Alternate Ending will be reincorporated as well. It was more subtle.

Muxing Hannibal. I'm calling this one "Hannibal: Desserts served with your main course" ... catchy ain't it? Lots of fun dinner references on these menus.

Found the Hannibal Lecter font online for the menu. Seems almost illegible, but what the heck, it seemed cooler than the zillion script fonts in my library.

ADM, IF YOU EVER WANT YOUR EDITS REVIWED FOR OT.COM JUST LET ME KNOW. WHEN THE SITE CHANGES OVER I'M GOING TO ADD A FAN EDIT REVIEW TO MY WEEKLY DVD REVIEW COLUMN. I'VE SPOKEN TO JAY (HAVEN'T HEARD ANYTHING BACK YET) ABOUT DOING A FAN EDIT CONTEST. I HAVE TONS OF REALLY COOL STUFF IN MY PRIZE VAULT FOR THE WINNERS. THE CONTEST WOULD EITHER USE CURRENT FAN EDITS AND SECOND CONTEST WHERE THE JUDGES (I HOPING TO GET JAY, BOSSK, GUNDARK, AND A COUPLE OF OTHERS ALONG WITH MYSELF) WOULD PICK A REALLY BAD MOVIE TO BE EDITTED BY THE CONTESTANTS. THE BEST EDIT WOULD OF COURSE WHEN THE PRIZE ALONG WITH THE BEST CURRENT (EXISTING) FAN EDIT. I WANT JUDGES THAT REALLY KNOW THEIR STUFF. JUDGES, OF COURSE, ARE NOT ALLOWED TO SUBMIT WORK FOR THE CONTEST. THE CONTEST WOULD HAVE A THREE MONTH WINDOW FOR SUBMISSIONS. THE JUDGES WOULD THEN HAVE TWO WEEKS TO VOTE.

GUYS, LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK.