Originally posted by: vivsavageI gotta ask... what changes are you making? What software are you using?

For myself, I'm making two versions of each film: a "book" version that follows Tolkien as closely as possible, and a mildly edited version that retains 99.9% of the original films but deletes small annoyances like Gimli's buffoonery.

I'm using Final Cut Pro 5, DVD Studio Pro, Cinematize, and Mac the Ripper.

I'm simply using Womble as per ADigitalMan's tutorial. I'm sure other programs have more features, but it suits me fine.

I'm actually doing something similar to your plan.

More or less a hybrid of the theatrical and extended editions. Getting rid of some of the annoying bits and some of the superfluous extended edition scenes. As it stands, my edited version of The Two Towers runs about three hours and four minutes. Here are some of the changes I made (using the theatrical as a comparison):
- Gollum's origin is back where it should've been in the first place (after Frodo calls him "Smeagol")
- Faramir's dream and flashback (from the extended) are back in
- I cut most of Gimli's comic relief stuff
- Elves at Helm's Deep are cut down. No reference to them though they're in the background. Just assume they're an elite Rohan arhery unit. As a result, the Lorien theme is still there.

- I think I cut one of the Merry/Pippin/Treebeard scenes and replaced it with one of the extended edition ones.
- I cut down the Warg battle. I wanted it out of there completely, but I couldn't think of a way witthout introducing some big continuity errors
- Brego scene is in
- I cut the Arwen/Aragorn flashbacks. Arwen's vision is still in but, I figured when Eowyn asks Aragorn about the necklace was good enough.
- I added the last scene between Faramir & Frodo, etc. back in. The other end stuff from the extended edition isn't in this cut though.

I also did Book type edits of each and also a shorter version of ROTK, but I'm too lazy to post about them now.