Hey, thank you! I’ve actually finished the edit but I’ll still reply to your points. I appreciate all the feedback and thought you’ve given it but I’ve worked on this for over 2 years, meaning every decision I have made has been considered back/forth for quite a bit of time:

The opening suffers from a lack of footage to work with, I can’t do anything about it. If I remove the Frodo cameo, then a lot of the narration needs to go.
The 60 years earlier text is from the original movie, I think it works well and is also a nice nod if you’re a fan of LOTR, to know how much earlier this is from Fellowship
The color of subtitles is like that because of the original subtitles (Legolas/Azog), I would have to manually change the colors of every subtitles to do what you’re asking, so instead of having mismatching Azog subtitles, when I added new subtitles for him, I just stuck to what the color format already was.
White Council has to go in being a book edit, but I get why it can be confusing
It’s easy to offer suggestions for things to change (part 1 to part 2 transition), but in reality when you actually look at the available footage it’s ridiculously hard to make a transition in this part. I would argue other similar fan edits to mine have even more of a sudden transition here, I don’t really know what you’re suggesting, how is it possible to change the implied distance of the eagle flight?
Again I have to completely disagree, you say it’s more logical to place the intermission after the barrels, but how is that logical? In my edit, the end of the barrel scene is about 60% of the way into the movie, not 50-50. Doing what other fan edits do just because doesn’t seem logical, the way it’s placed here is precisely to cover up the transition from part 1 to part 2, otherwise my project would have a janky and jarring transition from eagles to beorn, you need that pause there IMO. If I was going to remove the intermission from the end of part 1, then I’d just remove it all together, there’s no point in having an intermission anymore.
No, the lighting cannot be adjusted in this transition to Beorn’s. This is exactly how the time flows in the original movie, but I’ve cut like like 2 shots of daytime and then shots of azog’s pack in the forest, so it’s a tad bit quicker but just by a few seconds. I think going from night -> cut to morning -> then company finds a place to rest -> cut to night seems pretty cohesive, which like I said was how Jackson had it in the originals.
The wandering in Mirkwood is perfectly intended, this is a book cut in which they were supposed to have spent weeks there, it’s supposed to be unpleasant. Rushing through Mirkwood seems like a cop out
IMO, which you are welcome to disagree with, it’s actually more interesting to have Thranduil/Thorin’s backstory be mysterious, having a flashback that so blatantly shows them turning their back seems cheap, and also goes against the goals of my project. The flashbacks have many reasons for being cut, but the resulting Elf vs Dwarf conflict still works perfectly fine, introduced as early as the Trollshaws “The Elves looked on and did nothing”, then Beorn mentions to be cautious of the Woodland Elves, then Thorin and Thranduil have their talk, all makes sense to me.
“It’s unclear how Bard, Bilbo, and Gandalf got back to Dale ahead of the orcs.” Blame Peter Jackson, Dale is a big city I guess.
“It’s not clear why Bilbo ran off to ravenhill.” Seemed pretty clear he was trying to get as far away as possible from the battle, after the shots of him being surrounded by death, but yeah I can understand if you’re in the camp of not wanting Bilbo to run away. Again it’s a book cut, and this decision is something his Tolkien character did, which thematically fits with the themes of the hero not being a battle hardened warrior.
“Thorin and company get to ravenhill almost instantaneously. Maybe a fighting montage would help the transition.” There’s no fighting footage left for this spot unfortunately, it’s either cut to Ravenhill or have an (imo) annoying Dwarf-riding-goat sequence
“What is the purpose of the bats flying down over the armies? The shot cuts away, and it draws attention to the gap of time between them flying past Bilbo and them arriving at the battlefield itself.” Who said there was only one pack of bats?
“Did you show the part where the axe gets out of Bifur’s head? You do show him without it at Bilbo’s departure.” If you’re asking this, I’m confused if you watched the full edit? Yes, I obviously cut that silly scene, but this is a ridiculous nit pick, sorry. That’s exactly how it was in the theatrical version and no one thought it was weird, and on top of that it’s perfectly plausible that he lost his axe in the (probably) hours of battling we didn’t see him partake in, as we were focused on Thorin. I think it’s a great detail for audiences to pick up on, without needing an explanation.

-“Consider also using the cast and concept sketches during the closing credits” The cast sketches were in the movie by default, and so I would’ve assumed their absence would indicate I cut them intentionally, but yes I did. There were too many out of place things, from Alfrid to Tauriel to Dol Guldur concept art, and I don’t have any concept art from AUJ/DOS characters like the Goblin King, so I decided to just remove them. If anyone is an artist feel free to fix the credits and send it my way, but until then I’d rather stick with what looks more official even if it’s not as cool.

I’ve considered doing something for LOTR but it’s a huge project, I’m really happy with this one so I think for now that’s it for Middle Earth fan edits. Thanks again for watching the edit and I completely understand you were just giving your opinions and not trying to be negative, but those are all my reasonings for why I pretty much disagree with your points.

One thing I will say though, is that of course some of the things you mention could’ve been improved if I had access to more footage, but I don’t. The transition from part 1 to part 2,the intro, etc. of course I recognize these are not 100% perfect, but they are still seamless (in terms of audio) and get the job done, so that’s all I needed, otherwise I’d just have to resort to keeping a bunch of stuff from the originals.