ChainsawAsh

Well, I hate the packers by default, and my roommate is from Pittsburgh.  So I'm gonna have to go with the Steelers on this one.

I'm just glad I didn't take my friend up on his offer to watch the game at his place, which is in the South Loop not too far from Soldier Field.  Getting back home would have taken forever.

Thumbs up from me!

God damn it.  Fucking Packers.

I don't have a lot of experience with Premiere, I just know it can't work with AC3 files, it needs to be WAV or possibly AIFF.

You might consider cutting it with a stereo mix-down of the 5.1 track, then go back once you're done with the picture and match up the six WAV files to the picture, then render it out as six mono WAVs and mix them back together into an AC3 file.

I don't think you can use Premiere to split a 5.1 file into six mono files, but I could be wrong.

I'm sure someone else here could help you out.  I'd recommend changing the title of the thread to something like "Working with 5.1 in Premiere," so more people who know Premiere will click on it.

OUT = Original Unaltered Trilogy - refers to the films as released in 1977, 1980, and 1983 (and the 1981 Star Wars re-release that added "Episode IV: A New Hope" to the title)

GOUT = George's Original Unaltered Trilogy.  Refers to the DVD releases in 2006, which had the "original unaltered" versions as the bonus disc for each film (the first disc being the 2004 SE's).  Called GOUT because it's not a proper restoration of the OUT, it's just the 1993 Definitive Collection laserdisc master put on DVD, with the 1977 crawl spliced in at the beginning of Star Wars.

AVCHD = well, HD is high definition, and AVC is a video codec.  Here, an AVCHD generally refers to an HD release formatted to fit on a DVD-9 (dual-layer DVD).  Basically, think of it as Blu-Ray file structure on a DVD.

There is a list of acronyms around here somewhere, but I don't know where it is.

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Trilogy-Harrison-Ford/dp/B001EN71DG/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1295824334&sr=8-5

In Premiere, you're going to have to split the 5.1 AC3 file into six mono WAV files, edit using those, then export the video separately from the audio, export six mono WAVs, and recombine them into a new 5.1 AC3 file.

Give us a few screenshots with stars in them.  The biggest problem with the ROTJ GOUT is that the stars look blue, which is kind of annoying.  If that can be rectified without screwing up the rest of the movie, that would be amazing.

Moon is absolutely amazing.  Duncan Jones, the writer/director, is David Bowie's son.  The Blu-Ray looks and sounds fantastic.

The Blu-Ray of CE3K looks amazing, as well, and includes all 3 versions to boot (take that, GL!).

I haven't seen Apes on BR, so I don't know how that one looks.

Sounds like you got a nice sci-fi collection there!  Three of my favorites in high def all in one go...

Ghostbusters said:

ChainsawAsh, maybe you can use that saved money and donate it to Adywan. I'm not trying to tell you what to do with your money, but that is what you should do. jk

That's $2960 over the course of a year and you've been doing this for a little over 4 years? That's approximately $12000 wasted on Cigarettes!

Oh yeah, I know.  That $12,000 would cure all my debt problems, too.

And that's why I can't donate to Adywan - because that money I'm saving by not smoking needs to go toward bills, rent, and food (my smoking habit was pretty much funded by my food budget).

Thanks for your replies, everyone - glad to know I'm not the only ex-smoker here.

It also depends on the size of your screen, how close you sit to the screen*, and whether your display is calibrated or not.

*I notice more compression artifacts when viewing something full-screen on my 17" laptop display than on my 20" CRT or my roommate's 80" HD projector screen, and the main reason is because I sit about a foot away from my laptop's display, which means the screen fills more of my field of vision than either of the other two displays I mentioned.

Basically, if you have a small screen or a big one that you sit far away from, and/or it is calibrated or too dark, you won't notice a difference.  If the display is too bright, and/or you're watching on a large screen that fills much of your field of vision, you might.

Then again, I get taught in school how to notice these things, so I'd venture a guess that you wouldn't notice a difference between the two no matter what.

Besides, what's the bitrate of the retail GOUT discs?

--post changed because Frink's first picture wasn't showing up in my browser--

It's a jab against the 3D re-releases, which start in 2012 with Episode I.

Explain to me in specific details why Windows XP is better than Windows 7?

So, after 4 and a half years of smoking about a pack a day, I've finally gotten disgusted enough with myself to quit.  I smoked my last cigarette about fifteen minutes ago.

So, for the smokers of OT.Com:

- When did you start smoking?
- Why did you start smoking?
- Do you still smoke?  If so:
   - Have you tried quitting before?  How many times?
   - What was the longest amount of time you went without smoking?
- If not:
   - When did you quit?
   - Why did you quit?
   - How do you deal with cravings?
   - Do you have any tips for quitting?

I'll go first:

Started smoking in the summer of 2006, in order to try to win back an ex-girlfriend I was in love with (she was my first love, so I would have done anything to try to win her back).  She'd made an offhand comment about how she thought smoking was sexy, so I asked one of my of-age friends (I was 17 at the time) to buy me a pack.  I started smoking, and she showed no more interest in me than she had before.  Then I kept smoking to deal with her not wanting me anymore, then because I was addicted.

I've tried quitting several times - the longest I went without smoking was 3 months, I believe.  I don't even remember how I started again, but it was probably while I was drunk.

Today, I sat around the apartment doing nothing but watching How I Met Your Mother and smoking cigarettes.  I realized about an hour ago that I'd smoked two entire packs that had previously been unopened.  I've never been a two-pack-a-day guy, and seeing myself do that just got to me in a way nothing else ever had.  So I smoked my last one (after cradling it like a delicate flower for half an hour), threw away anything related to smoking (cigarettes) that I could find, and now here I am.

We'll see how this goes, but for now, I'm optimistic.  At the very least, I'll be saving about $70 per week, which is great since I'm so very broke right now.  So I'm going to try to focus on that to get me through the first couple weeks.

From the Q&A:

Matthew Stover said:

Revenge of the Sith was based on Mr. Lucas' final shooting script; the film was already in editing by the time I started the book. They also flew me out to Skywalker Ranch for a meeting with Mr. Lucas, Howard Roffman, and Shelly Shapiro. Basically I got to hang with him for a couple hours talking Jedi, Sith and the Force. And he line-edited the manuscript personally, so I'm told.

So I'd venture a guess that much of the "dark side seduction" angle didn't make it into the novelization, but I haven't read it so I don't know for sure.

Not much of a difference, but that's not a bad thing.  I vote for the tweaks as well.

Just have her watch the originals first, then the PT later.  The same way most of us saw them.

Highlights from the AMA so far:

Q: What was your initial reaction to getting the script?  Did you rage at it?

A: Nope. The script was cool. I told my editor(s) that if the movie came out as exciting as that script was, it'd blow The Empire Strikes Back right out of the fucking water.

Q: What was your opinion of the film?

A: I thought it was the highest-grossing film of 2005.

Best non-answer answer ever.

Q: What did you think of the Star Wars prequels?

A: My feeling about the prequels are mixed -- very much like everyone else's.

Q: What was it like working on something as vast as a New Jedi Order novel? Were you provided kind of a 'big book of njo' to keep up with canon? It amazes me when I think about trying to write in that setting.

A: I was given a series bible, a cartload of reference books and copies of each book as it came out. The near-impossibility of keeping up with an always-evolving canon was part of why I pitched that particular approach to the story -- so I wouldn't have to keep revising to incorporate new stuff. I also wrote the book very fast, figuring that once my book was approved, the other writers would have to worry about keeping continuity with my book.

He's being understandably cagey about what questions he answers and how, but those were the best I could find on a quick skim.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/f73ma/iama_5_time_nyt_best_selling_novelist_author_of/

You can register with Reddit for free and ask any questions you like (AMA = Ask Me Anything).

Note that he doesn't have to respond to everything, but it's only 4 hours into the AMA, which makes it more likely that he'll still be looking at the comments and answering questions.

Figured some here might be interested.

It's my understanding that it's a dark science fiction film taking place in the same universe as the Alien films, set years before the first Alien film.  It's not a "prequel" per se in that it isn't directly connected to the events of the main series.

Frankly, I think this is a great idea, and I'm looking forward to it more since I heard about this.

Yeah, I've seen that happen as well.  Lord of War was released 2.39:1 in theaters, but the initial DVD was 1.78:1.  They didn't fix it and release a re-issue until a whole lot of people complained.

Also The Man from Earth, though most of my friends hated that one because of the acting (so, they had the reaction I had to Cube).

Just watched the new sample:

1. Colors look great!

2. I like the "softer" subtitles better.  It makes it feel like they were printed onto the film that was scanned in, as opposed to something that was digitally added later.

Well, first thing I can see is that the "integrated graphics" card is very slow, but beyond that I'm not sure what the issue is.

When you say it's "slow," what exactly, in as much detail as possible, is it doing to make you say it's slow?