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Criterion Collection: Adventures of Baron Munchausen & The Fisher King (Released) — Page 6

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Originally posted by: digitalfreaknyc
why so many menus?

Different text panels from the text supplements on the laserdiscs.

bdev, thanks so much for your dedication to this. I really can't wait for the result.

I used to be very active on this forum. I’m not really anymore. Sometimes, people still want to get in touch with me about something, and that is great! If that describes you, please email me at [my username]ATgmailDOTcom.

Hi everybody. You’re all awesome. Keep up the good work.

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Originally posted by: ReverendBeastly
Originally posted by: digitalfreaknyc
why so many menus?

Different text panels from the text supplements on the laserdiscs.

bdev, thanks so much for your dedication to this. I really can't wait for the result.



ah. so that's how you do it? I figured. That's what i was going to do with the dracula disc and others. i probably should have. There was too much text crap. i might do that with evita.
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good god... How on earth do you find the power to go on? Kudos to you sir!! yo don't think this is a Münchausen curse do you?


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Yeah ... the first line of the commentary says something like "At some point, we all go too far."

And yes, you guys are right, each text frame is actually just a menu. I was worried intially that there was some limit on how many menus you can have in sequence, but the program hasn't yelled at me yet, so I don't know. It's the best way to do it, but it's damn tedious.

--bdev
Criterion Projects done: She's Gotta Have It, The Princess Bride, The Fisher King

In Progress Criterions: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (99% done), Taxi Driver (90% done), Citizen Kane (50% done), Othello (99.99% done)

Possibly coming next: Ghostbusters, The Magnificent Ambersons (the theatrical cut, a reconstruction according to Prof. Carringer's script analysis, and the colorized version)
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Theoretically, the initial limit you should reach is 1Gb worth of menus, which I would imagine is an awful lot of still menus.

Of course that's 1GB per VTS, so if Encore let you allocate menu's to other VTS' you could conceivably have an entire DVD of menus, although I imagine you'd reach some sort of PGC-limit before then.

Just think how many 'menus' make up these quiz DVDs which seem 'all the rage' at present.

Save London’s Curzon Soho Cinema

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Yes, I'm probably not to a gig of menus yet. I think there are like 5 gigs of psd files, but so far it's showing only like 3gb on disc total with a whole bunch of video and audio elements mixed in.

I'm hoping that I don't contribute to the discovery of the upper limit with this project.

--bdev
Criterion Projects done: She's Gotta Have It, The Princess Bride, The Fisher King

In Progress Criterions: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (99% done), Taxi Driver (90% done), Citizen Kane (50% done), Othello (99.99% done)

Possibly coming next: Ghostbusters, The Magnificent Ambersons (the theatrical cut, a reconstruction according to Prof. Carringer's script analysis, and the colorized version)
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Normally still menus compress down to a 1-frame MPEG-2 file in the region of 200k (ish). Certainly at least within Spruce Maestro.

I guess the question is whether you hit the limits of Encore rather than the DVD Spec...

Let's hope not!

Save London’s Curzon Soho Cinema

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Encore is such a steaming piece of crap on a stick that I don't even bother worrying about what it's published limitations are anymore.

I'm just going through right now and proof-reading each frame, which requires it to communicate with photoshop. I can about 30 frames done, and then it crashes. I pretty much have to save every time I make a change with anything. Supposedly it's not meant to be run on AMD processors, and I think that's probably the main problem since my laptop is an intel and it hasn't had too many problems yet. I have to compile on that computer, as I've mentioned before.

--bdev
Criterion Projects done: She's Gotta Have It, The Princess Bride, The Fisher King

In Progress Criterions: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (99% done), Taxi Driver (90% done), Citizen Kane (50% done), Othello (99.99% done)

Possibly coming next: Ghostbusters, The Magnificent Ambersons (the theatrical cut, a reconstruction according to Prof. Carringer's script analysis, and the colorized version)
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So, I've pretty much given up hope that this version of disc two will compile. It has crashed two computer several times over, so there's no real way it can happen. I even ramped the virtual memory up to 5 gigs ... nuthin'

Plan B is to make each series of slides into a slideshow. This approach is sub-optimal in that, depending on the dvd player, there may be numbers shown on the screen during flipping through them; my Sony player displays an obnoxious blue bar on the top. My hope with going the extra step of making them into menus was that everyone's machine would have displayed the content in the same manner, but that's just not possible.

I have archived all of my source content (4 dvds), so if someone with an extremely fast Intel based computer and Encore wants to give it a shot at some point, let me know, but for right now I'm just going to do it this way.

--bdev
Criterion Projects done: She's Gotta Have It, The Princess Bride, The Fisher King

In Progress Criterions: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (99% done), Taxi Driver (90% done), Citizen Kane (50% done), Othello (99.99% done)

Possibly coming next: Ghostbusters, The Magnificent Ambersons (the theatrical cut, a reconstruction according to Prof. Carringer's script analysis, and the colorized version)
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Just wanted to say bdev - don't be too downhearted... I think sometimes when you are so close to any project you sometimes become extremely focussed on one particular detail and getting it right (especially when its bug-based). You're right - it probably woul dhave been nice to have it the way you envisaged it but to the majority of us the fact that we get to see the material at all through your efforts is just so good that it overwhelms any issues like numbers in the corner.

I've spent weeks bugfixing projects only to admit defeat on one aspect a have to do it in a certain way only to come back a year or two later and not be able to remember or even notice what the supposed 'bug' was!

You're nearly there - and I can hardly wait

I know I'm not the only one who appreciates all the crap you are putting yourself through.
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Plan B isn't working either. For some reason, it gets past the "building slideshow" step and then starts importing video, which it does repeatedly for about 2 hours. The hard drive then fills up (on the laptop, mind you) and then I get some weird error about "reaching the end of the stream without a start point." Apparently I'm the first person to ever get this error as there is no info about it on the internet.

I will try to figure out more about this bug, but if I can't get it, I will have to start over from scratch in some other (competent) program. I'm glad I'm using this through an institutional version of the whole post-production pack. I would be irate if I had paid full price for a personal use version.

I will keep updating here, but for right now I'm sort of just spinning my tires.

--bdev
Criterion Projects done: She's Gotta Have It, The Princess Bride, The Fisher King

In Progress Criterions: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (99% done), Taxi Driver (90% done), Citizen Kane (50% done), Othello (99.99% done)

Possibly coming next: Ghostbusters, The Magnificent Ambersons (the theatrical cut, a reconstruction according to Prof. Carringer's script analysis, and the colorized version)
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All I can really say that is in any way comforting is that if you re-do this project using DVD-lab (my own personal choice for DVD authoring) is that it also reads Photoshop document files and is able to import them as images, which you can import as menus. So you wouldn't have to do any of that work over again, just the maddening linking and such.

I used to be very active on this forum. I’m not really anymore. Sometimes, people still want to get in touch with me about something, and that is great! If that describes you, please email me at [my username]ATgmailDOTcom.

Hi everybody. You’re all awesome. Keep up the good work.

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The problem with DVD-Lab is that the menu size (or pixel ratio) it wants is different from Encore for some reason, so I'd have to do all of the menus over. I also don't have access to a full version. The labs here actually have Scenarist in them - though I can't actually get a copy for my own computer - but that would also require extensive changes to every menu, and I don't want to read a 600 page manual just to make one damn disc.

My computer is now free of Encore. A very disturbing aspect in all of this is the horseshit support from Adobe. I never once got an answer that didn't place blame on some other vendor's product (cinemacraft, soft encode, windows, athlon, etc, etc). I'm far from the only person who has had problems with this glorified beta software, although my guess is that I stuck with it longer than most. Why are software developers such a touchy lot? I also had the save knee-jerk alibi-filled defense from the guy who authored the junk hd2dvd software that just doubled every 5th frame or whatever it did.

Alright, now I feel better.

--bdev
Criterion Projects done: She's Gotta Have It, The Princess Bride, The Fisher King

In Progress Criterions: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (99% done), Taxi Driver (90% done), Citizen Kane (50% done), Othello (99.99% done)

Possibly coming next: Ghostbusters, The Magnificent Ambersons (the theatrical cut, a reconstruction according to Prof. Carringer's script analysis, and the colorized version)
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That's right, I do seem to remember that oddity. Hmm... I guess it's a lot of work still, whatever way you look at it. Sorry that you're having so much trouble with this project, but I know a lot of people are going to appreciate it when it eventually does get finished.

I used to be very active on this forum. I’m not really anymore. Sometimes, people still want to get in touch with me about something, and that is great! If that describes you, please email me at [my username]ATgmailDOTcom.

Hi everybody. You’re all awesome. Keep up the good work.

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Also, DVD lab doesn't seem to have a "Manual Advance" option in the slideshow creation tool. It's essential that people be able to flip through text slides at their own pace.

--bdev
Criterion Projects done: She's Gotta Have It, The Princess Bride, The Fisher King

In Progress Criterions: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (99% done), Taxi Driver (90% done), Citizen Kane (50% done), Othello (99.99% done)

Possibly coming next: Ghostbusters, The Magnificent Ambersons (the theatrical cut, a reconstruction according to Prof. Carringer's script analysis, and the colorized version)
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bdev,

If Encore & DVD-Lab aren't 'up to snuff', and as you rightly say Scenarist is a huge step for what is already a huge disc, have you considered looking into Spruce Maestro?

I use it quite a bit so PM me if you need pointers.

Save London’s Curzon Soho Cinema

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Originally posted by: bdev
Also, DVD lab doesn't seem to have a "Manual Advance" option in the slideshow creation tool. It's essential that people be able to flip through text slides at their own pace.

--bdev


pm sent.

Blade Runner: The Complete Collection

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All,

I've taken the project as far as I can, and I will shortly be handing off all materials to a few different people in hopes that they will be able to get the second disc done. The first disc has been done for a while. Somewhat fittingly, right as I was about to burn discs with the source material, my video card crapped out and that computer is out of commission for the moment. I have other discs floating around with the material on it, so it's not lost or anything, but just another setback for a project wrought with setbacks.

Sorry for the delay,
--bdev

PS - the deleted scenes are from workprints, so there are lots of print damage and missing sound elements. I don't believe that a watchable extended version could be constructed.

PPS - According to Gilliam (from the book Gilliam on Gilliam), Criterion offered him the chance to make a restored cut (to the original 3+ hour running time) when the laserdisc was made, a la Brazil. This project was never started due to financial constraints (the projected cost was 250k dollars at the time) and because Gilliam was burned out at that point. Perhaps with newer digital editing equipment, the cost could now be lower. Columbia certainly doesn't seem to give a damn about it, so maybe it's obtainable.
Criterion Projects done: She's Gotta Have It, The Princess Bride, The Fisher King

In Progress Criterions: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (99% done), Taxi Driver (90% done), Citizen Kane (50% done), Othello (99.99% done)

Possibly coming next: Ghostbusters, The Magnificent Ambersons (the theatrical cut, a reconstruction according to Prof. Carringer's script analysis, and the colorized version)
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Well, someone will have to hassle Gilliam about it!

Sorry to hear about your troubles, Brad, and I really do hope that someone else will be able to author the second disc to be as it should, cuz I still really want to see this.

I used to be very active on this forum. I’m not really anymore. Sometimes, people still want to get in touch with me about something, and that is great! If that describes you, please email me at [my username]ATgmailDOTcom.

Hi everybody. You’re all awesome. Keep up the good work.

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Hi!

I was already losing hope that this project would continue. But fortunately...

Oh, and you've got another mail!

Regards,
Zar1967.