MoveAlong said:

Ady, what did you do to the Biggs and Luke scene to smooth out the original 12fps look? Also, I really like the addition of the music. Certainly gives it more of a cinematic feel. Also, what source did you use? Was it my Lost Scenes or someone else's?

i used the ripped png's from behind the magic that someone posted a while back (can't remember who did this rip, sorry)
To be honest i have deleted the adobe after effects project file so i can't remember the exact way i did it. I'm pretty sure that i opened the pngs in virtualdubmod and saved them as a 29fps avi. then imported it into after effects. changed the composition framerate to 25fps (there was a reason i didn't make it 24). changed the length of the avi to match the exact length of the audio using the time stretch function. I set the "frame blending" to "pixel motion" and rendered it. It did cause a few artefacts during fast motion but it did work at smoothing out the motion. With extra work (which i couldn't be bothered to do cleaning up all the frames) you can mask out the problem areas and create a smooth motion copy. Like i said i haven't got the project file to check that this was the exact way but i'm pretty sure it was.

Onto the subject of newsgroups well i find them as easy as torrents but hell of a lot faster. i use giganews and can download a DVD-5 in about 1hr 30mins on an 8mb connection. It have the unlimited account which costs about £12 per month but there are cheaper providers out there. If you compare how long it takes to get a DVD from usenet compared to the crawl it takes for a torrent it is worth investing in a usenet account because you would probably be using that much electric with having to have your pc on so long to get the torrent downloaded.

It is as easy as torrent too. once you have set up your newsreader, which with something like newzbinpro is really easy because all you have to do is enter your username & password and your done. you can then load up the groups you want easily but this isn't necessary to get the posts you want. took me 2 minutes when i first used it to get all set up and running.

All you have to do is use the binsearch site. you do a search and it lists all the files available. once you have found the release you just tick the box by the side of it (usually a complete release has already been grouped together) and create an nzb file. this is the same as having a torrent file because it contains all the info your reader needs to download the files . then open your nzb file in your newsreader, tell it where to download the files to and your done. Easy. i can't really see anything harder in using newsgroups. its faster, you don't have to upload anything which gives you your maximum download speed. people moaning that they can't have a credit card so they can't use usenet need to do some searching on the internet. Pay as you go credit cards are widely available and anyone can get one. some charge you a monthly fee but free ones are available, you just need to shop around. And i guess that the ones moaning about having to pay a few pounds(or dollars) each month for good access but use torrents regularly can't be paying for their electric bill. I know for a fact that mine certainly went down each month once i stopped using torrents and switched to usenet. Plus usenet isn't throttled by most ISP's the way torrents are or at least not as much so you usually always get your full download speed. And most ISP's have their own usenet access but don't have the good retention as a proper service, so you wouldn't even have to pay for it.