logo Sign In

The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE] + Subtitles for season one! — Page 18

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Sade, thanks for the kind words. Glad you think that intro works. I know exactly where those errors have come from and they should be easy enough to check and fix. They’re related to my earlier mistake so shouldn’t reoccur in future episodes.

I’ll check the black levels in the cut to tanks, though that bit is kind of necessary in order to construct this new dialogue. Originally Obi-Wan calls Anakin to talk about the plan, but in this whole scene I’m using the dialogue from Cat and Mouse where Bail calls Obi-Wan then Obi-Wan calls Anakin to get the same information across. But Anakin receiving the call in this scene doesn’t give me enough time so I had to pad it- first by reversing the shot so Anakin looks out the window, then at “something outside the window”, then back to his focus on the call. If the shot feels too short my only real option is to extend it instead, and let the dialogue take a little longer.

I’ll review the other issues and trims!

And everyone- I’ll think more about the crawl. Though I am going to release some of the Tartakovsky series as episode 0 of this show.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time

sade1212 said:

I detect frame issues: for example, one duplicated at 106, one skipped between frame 116 and 117, duplicate again at 129, another dupe at 223 etc. MPV and MPC demonstrate this behaviour, so I think it’s inherent to the file. I’ve checked my local rips of TCW theatrical and the Hidden Enemy and they’re constant FPS 23.976 and don’t have any dupes. I’d double check your rips and how you’ve converted them.

I agree with DZ that the intro text could be spiced up a tad, but there’s a fine balance with not making it too wordy, and it definitely should continue to avoid spoiling that Ahsoka is assigned to Anakin (edit: whoops, about six new messages appeared while I was typing this one, and I see this was already iterated on). Perhaps you could work in a little reference to “Like fire, across the galaxy, the Clone Wars spread. In league with the wicked Count Dooku, more and more planets slip. Against this threat, upon the Jedi Knights falls the duty, to lead the army of the Republic. And, as the heat of war grows, so too grows the prowess of one most gifted student of the Force.”, though obviously that’d be super redundant if you then later turn CW2003 into an episode of this.

The actual editing is really solid, though, and an inventive way to put the Hidden Enemy together as just a prologue to the movie. I feel this works well as an introduction, as we’re rapidly reintroduced to Anakin and Obi-Wan, who aren’t too far from their AOTC characterisations, and then we meet Asajj quickly to get us used to the new characters.

Nitpicks:

  • There’s an odd cut at 2:10 between the table breaking and the fight continuing up the stairs. Perhaps the little bit of saber fighting after the table break could be excised entirely.
  • Similarly, the cut at ~2:16 feels like the music trails out a little abruptly - with such a vigorous swooping motion from the incoming bombers, perhaps this could be a wipe?
  • The wipe at 4:00 isn’t feathered at the top. The jump from night to day and the repurposing of this footage and the Bail audio works well, though.
  • The cutaway to tanks at 4:22 is too quick and unnecessary. Before it, the black levels look like this (correct), and after it, the black levels look like this (crushed) - is your 0-255 or 16-235 set correctly?
  • The cutaway after “the show is about to begin” works well.

McFibb, the droid stuff is pretty heavily baked into TCW, so you’ll probably just wind up inevitably having to stomach some of it. Same with Yoda using a lightsaber and many other traditional PT complaints.

Thanks sade for your technical feedback. i was about to write something similar, e.g. the frame drops as i use mpc also.
Doesn’t have to add anything, you all covered it.

As for the Intro text, i like eddiedeans from the start, but yours just flows better if pronunced. So i would advocate for this.

@eddiedean i think it’s best to not do a weekly schedule (stated this before). As you said, you will get more time for each episode and don’t have to rush anything.
Other than things already said, i liked the editing of yours!

Author
Time

EddieDean said:
I’ll check the black levels in the cut to tanks, though that bit is kind of necessary in order to construct this new dialogue. Originally Obi-Wan calls Anakin to talk about the plan, but in this whole scene I’m using the dialogue from Cat and Mouse where Bail calls Obi-Wan then Obi-Wan calls Anakin to get the same information across. But Anakin receiving the call in this scene doesn’t give me enough time so I had to pad it- first by reversing the shot so Anakin looks out the window, then at “something outside the window”, then back to his focus on the call. If the shot feels too short my only real option is to extend it instead, and let the dialogue take a little longer.

i could live with what you’ve done. If it works to extend this scene by half a or one second, do so. i think this would be enough. Nice work though to edit this scene this way, really nice.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Right, I’ve been able to fix those issues highlighted. I’m finishing up the episode now (excluding the intros and outros) and am going to render it overnight (I’m in GMT) so I can upload in the morning.

Those video issues look endemic - if they’re every hundred then that’s hundreds to fix, but I don’t want to remake all the smoothed audio so I’ll see if I can just create a new video track with compliant sources. All of the sources, the project settings and the ruler are at 23.976, but I must have lost something by originally setting it up as 29fps. If I have to duplicate it all I will…!

The version I’ll upload will contain those frame issues but at least I’ll be able to gather any willing feedback while I work on fixing them at the same time.

Edit: No, I won’t do that, the video using the movie as the source is too bad when rendered. I’ll fix it first.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time

One suggestion about the crawl. Be mindful about your word choice. SW crawls (both text and CW narration) always use very formal English with “big words”. This may not be very important to some, but I as a non-native speaker kinda was forced to learn to pick up on those things to become fluent. All of them are that way.

It’s only one word that bugged me: “So”. It’s very informal.
I’d suggest:

Anakin Skywalker has achieved the rank of JEDI KNIGHT. In light of this, his master Obi-Wan Kenobi has put in a request for a new padawan.

The rest is really good. Adverbs and Adjetives like you used in “vicious Sith assassin” are also very present in crawls. That works really well.

It’s a very small change but I think it fits SW vocabulary better.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

One point of focus that’s probably worth mentioning here is that my intro text for episodes isn’t necessarily a Star Wars ‘opening crawl’. I’m deliberately using the term ‘intro text’ to make that distinction - as many of you have pointed out, we needn’t be beholden to convention. Whether or not Star Wars as a franchise had that concept, this show’s identity has introductory text (by necessity, since it gives more flexibility than keeping the narrator). Similarly, it’s distinct from the newsreel.

(Not that I’m disagreeing with any of the suggestions here.)

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time

That’s true. Your approach is actually more in par with what was done in Solo than the main film series. It still has that vocabulary I mentioned, though.
One thing I just realized is that with Maul making an appearance at the end, your similar crawl could be another cool visual tie to the series. However, I don’t expect you to look to that film for inspiration. IMO it’s very forgettable.

As for the length of the text, I think that around the same amount of text that a traditional narration has would be alright. I think yours for ep1 is great.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

The clip flows very well. It keeps the better part of the action and most important of all feels like entertaining Star Wars.

Maybe I missed or forgot a detail, but who is meant to be Ventress’ informant that she mentioned? The traitorous clone sargeant was cut.

I agree with the suggestions made about the wording of the opening crawl.

And I don’t think every instance of the droids speaking or providing comic relief should be cut, only if they actively interrupt the flow of the action. I’ve just come to terms with the fact they’re laughable antagonists and little more than cannon fodder. Same for stormtroopers in Rebels, the sequel trilogy and Mandalorian.

Author
Time

ADR14NAT1ON, agreed that ‘so’ is out of place, and that the dialogue should still be fruitier than I had it.

Knight of Kalee, I was hoping that the ‘informant’ and Ventress’ later reference to ‘you are betrayed’ could stay, even unanswered, because I figured that the grand army / the Republic at large are such huge organisations that feasibly the Separatists may have lots of options for subterfuge. We also know that the Seppies have been planning this war for a far longer time than the Republic, and both Sidious and Dooku are subtle manipulators. Even if not, two episodes later (in my ordering) we see Captain Argyus turn traitor and be working directly with Ventress, so I think that could implicitly answer it if it’s still niggling at the back of someone’s mind.

Do you think that works, or should I remove the reference?

Also agreed on droids. We have to accept them as part of the ‘fabric’ of Star Wars, as we also have to accept that Star Wars often enjoys light humour. I’ll seek to prune only the most egregious LOLs.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Right, my sources for the Christophsis episode are being read by mediainfo as 23.976 but by Vegas Movie Studio as 25.000 or 24.001. So I will have to recreate the work, which is disheartening, and right now I can’t get a hold of alternate sources. So I’ll put that on the backburner for a little while. I’d really like to get one episode finished, end-to-end, so on with episode two - Death Watch on Mandalore. For this one, all of the sources are behaving and the frames are NICELY ALIGNED TO THE RULER. Plus, unlike the Christophsis episode, all of the voice/sfx are on a different track to the music, so the editing is super easy. I know the cuts I want to make for this one so I’ll see y’all in a few hours…

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time

Hey buddy, I had this issue with The Clone Wars and the framerate. Although the project settings are at 25.000, you can still render it in the preferred 23.976. in the render settings, you can edit the preset of the file type, the frame rate, as well rendering quality can be altered there 😃 So if I’m right, there well be no need to start from scratch. I was always a bit confused when I rendered a video, it looked fine in Vegas 😂

Current Edits:
Obi-Wan Kenobi - TBC
The Mandalorian (Season 1) - V1 Complete
The Mandalorian II (Season 2) - TBC
The Mandalorian Returns (TBOBF) - TBC

Author
Time

I’d be happy to re-edit together the Christophsis video to match your reference and audio track, if that’d be useful, but I use Premiere rather than Vegas.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

That’d be amazing Sade, thank you, but there are so many cuts in there, I think in the time it’d take to detail it for you I might as well have done it myself. It’s about 50 cuts, I think. I’ll just take a day to rebuild it copying myself.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Basically, aslong as the render settings matches the frame rate of the source. You shouldn’t have a problem. I always checked before hand since alot of source files tell you the frame rate in the video info.

Alternatively you can create a new project at the source frame rate. CTR+A your existing project and paste it into the new one. Think it’s worked for me.

Current Edits:
Obi-Wan Kenobi - TBC
The Mandalorian (Season 1) - V1 Complete
The Mandalorian II (Season 2) - TBC
The Mandalorian Returns (TBOBF) - TBC

Author
Time

So I’ve just spent the day really enjoying doing the full Mandalore cut. I’m really happy with it. But technical issues are letting me down.

  • Mediainfo reads the original source mkv files as 23.976fps
  • Mediainfo reads the ripped mp4 video files as 23.976fps
  • In the media window of Vegas Movie Studio when selected, it recognises the files as 23.976fps
  • When I check the file properties in Vegas, it recognises the files as 25.000fps (greyed out)
  • When the project settings and ruler ate at 25.000fps, the frames align to the ruler
  • When the project settings and ruler are at 23.976fps, the frames do not align
  • I’m still able to render at 23.976fps, and both seem OK? Take a look:

Rendered when the project is set at 23.976:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tM-wU5cE9WK-9IvZcVfV8hxF2n5w2uHk/view?usp=sharing

Rendered when the project is set at 25.000:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1udn2HmHR3y6JVBB7EyE54-iqBwHVDm3-/view?usp=sharing

I can’t tell if those have any blurring, duplicated frames, missing frames, or any other issues. I’ve turned off resampling for all media.

The other thing you can see there is that I have crushed blacks. I’m passing all media through the Studio RGB to Computer RGB default colour levels filter, which seems necessary because otherwise my blacks aren’t true black on starfields, titles etc. They’re dark grey. And weirdly, the render has the crushed blacks but the preview itself doesn’t, so I don’t know where in the process this issue’s emerging.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time
 (Edited)

That said, I’m really happy with the actual cuts. I’ve managed to remove the conveyor belt entirely, cut out the mini spiders, and cut out the bits where people are just wandering around in the cargo bay.

The conveyor belt scene took a major rework. You can see it in the clips in my previous post (though excuse any framerate issues.) It now goes:

  • Obi-Wan goes off to ‘meditate’, we see him approach the front door of the mine
  • Satine and Viszla talk
  • Mandalorians jump out at Obi-Wan, he, loses his lightsaber, but isn’t knocked out
  • Obi-Wan calls Satine at dinner with Viszla. I’ve added the sounds of background fighting to his call dialogue. Now, he’s simply overwhelmed and suprised, fighting tough guys without his saber, and knowing that Satine is savvy enough to distract them so he can get the upper hand. He’s putting her at risk but they spent a year together - they trust each other.
  • Satine leaves dinner and arrives at the mine.
  • We see Obi-Wan’s still in the same fight from earlier.
  • Satine triggers the door alarm.
  • As they fight (as opposed to while they have Obi-Wan on the conveyor), the Mandos now say “A disturbance at the entrance”, then team up to knock Obi-Wan back, still unarmed (he looks like he’s taken a bad hit here and needs a moment - previously this led into him being knocked out), then say “Let’s go check it out”
  • They run off, and Satine sneaks in
  • I use a long shot from earlier when Obi-Wan scanned the room, and cut dialogue of Satine saying “where are you?” (previously from when she arrived at the entrance), to give the Mandalorians time to reach the entrance, realise they’ve been tricked, and run back in. I also added cut dialogue from the conveyor scene to have them say “The boss will love the lightsaber”, to semi-justify why Viszla has it later. (You have to assume something happens offscreen.)
  • The Mandalorians immediately grab Satine, to Obi-Wan’s (hidden) cry of “Look out!”, but then I use the second half of his backflip off the conveyor to have him jump down from the rafters - this actually works really nicely, I think. It implies that he’s used the element of suprise - exactly as they did when they caught him - instead of relying on might versus two unexpected Mandos.
  • He lands on the one Mando, knocking him out, and flips the other. As in the original, we cut into Satine and Obi-Wan moving to get out of there right away.

I also found that the focus on Obi-Wan and Satine is much stronger when we don’t keep cutting away to the lower deck. Her scenes actually flow perfectly, so we get about ten minutes of really nice, deep, character building.

Now I’ve watched it in this format, I think this episode works great as our episode two for the theoretical first time viewer. Right away we get Mandalore, Death Watch, and the Darksaber. We get new layers to existing things: shades of grey within the Republic, new depth to Obi-Wan. And we end on Anakin killing a guy in cold blood with a smirk, which shows that this show is going to explore more of Anakin’s fall.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Right, while letting other tasks do their thing, I’ve taken a closer look at the necessary cuts to the Malevolence arc - our episode four.

The bulk of Ahsoka’s development is in the first episode, the second is OK but slow, and the last is poor.

I had been thinking I’d switch Trench in for Grievous, and there is enough Trench dialogue to replace the key things (he says ‘I’, ‘on’, and ‘cannon’, so you can at least have him fire the Malevolence’s Ion Cannon), but I realised that if you’re keeping the focus on the first episode, it actually makes Grievous more badass rather than less. And Grievous needs to appear tougher.

I realised a way to make the final edited episode have more threat and heart is if we roll episode two’s attacks on the medical station into this one - plus make it multiple stations. So now, in the crawl, we establish that Grievous has a new flagship and has been destroying medical stations - that’s good and villainous but also strategic this early in the war - and no fleet that’s been sent to stop him has come back alive.

We establish that Abregado system (where he does the pod killings) is near to Naboo/Rendellia, and that he’s been spotted there. Plo goes to Abregado, we use some extra dialogue from episode three where he says “The droids are jamming our transmissions”, episode one plays out pretty much in full. After Plo is saved by Ahsoka, we see him and Yularen tell Anakin that he’s now in Rendellia where there’s another station. We cut to Plo and Ahsoka in episode three calling Luminara for support, and she says she’s on her way, as we see the Malevolence bearing down on the medical station, and the Kaminoan working on helping clones escape. But then we immediately cut to the end of episode two where the three Republic cruisers appear near the medical station, and the start of episode three where they do a lot of laser damage. We splice in Grievous getting into his ship, see Obi-Wan shout “Maximum firepower”, cut to laser fire, and simply have the Malevolence explode - we can cut from one of its smaller explosions to some clone admirals cheering. Grievous goes to hyperspace, we wrap up.

All of the wheat, none of the chaff. And Grievous got to be a savage who just got overwhelmed by superior firepower.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time

DZ-330 said:

Take 2! 😃

War is beginning to spread across the galaxy.

New battlefields are rapidly emerging as the armies of the Republic and Separatists fight for control.

Taking a direct role in this conflict, Senator BAIL ORGANA has began providing relief and supplies to numerous clone squadrons on the front lines.

Anakin Skywalker has achieved the rank of JEDI KNIGHT. In honor of this achievement, Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi has put in a request to teach his skills to a new padawan learner.

Meanwhile, the pair have tracked Count Dooku’s vicious assassin, ASAJJ VENTRESS, to the planet of Christophsis.

But Ventress is far more cunning than she appears…

I enjoy this. Much work is needed to make this good. I’m no enthusiast on opening crawls, however this looks fine to me. Are you going to incorporate the second season of the Mandalorian as well?