Escape From New York [spoRv] *BD-25 RELEASED* — Page 4

Hi Andrea, so sorry to hear your latest project is causing you such woes!

Some quick observations from here:

Positives: My Panasonic DMP-BDT220 loaded up the disc just fine, immediately recognising it as a BD disc. The loading screens and main menus appeared without a fault. When I play the movie, it plays and navigates smoothly so I have no problem enjoying the excellent restoration.

Negatives: The audio menu is unresponsive, and after I click down a few options it gives up altogether and flips back to the main menu. As a result I couldn't access the commentary this way. Similarly, the chapter menu is unresponsive and when I finally accessed the second screen it locked up altogether, necessitating a restart of the machine (a first for this player!)

It's a pity that MultiACVHD's authoring and menu structure seem to be less compliant than they should be - it's a nice enough tool, and I frequently use its playlist merging feature to author multi-part discs (without menus). Contacting the author might help to iron out these issues.

On a side note, I admit I was a little surprised to see the modern MGM logo at the start - not only is is anachronistic, but they weren't even the theatrical distributor (that being AVCO Embassy according to IMDB). If you should happen to go to a V2, might I politely suggest its removal or substitution?

I realize it is working for you, but for us, it's not. I tested your THE THING out on more BD players than I can count and they all couldn't handle anything other than playback. Trying to chapter forward, scan, pause, switch audio channels resulted in freezing or crashes. 

The same thing is happening with Escape From New York. And for the record I have a PS3. 

Might I suggest a simplified version, minus some of the audio tracks, movie only and tested on at least half a dozen different BD players. Also, using discs burned via different methods... Some on a PC, some on a Mac, etc. Perfect your final product and then move onto more restorations.

There is no question a great deal of hard work went into these, but something is amiss and considering the length of time it takes to download these, many will just pass for fear of the same result. 

I am going to stick Escape into BDRebuilder for a movie only BD25 minus the foreign audio tracks and hope for success. 

Matt_Stevens said:

Perfect your final product and then move onto more restorations.

This a 100 times over, you should really do this, I mean you are all over the place with projects and seeing who is doing what so you can do it, posting screens for other possibilities, I mean really you should slow down and read that line from Matt a few times, this project was the first one I downloaded and it is messed up, for me to fix this it would have to be re encoded and re authored all from scratch, and I am not going to do all that.

So please take Matts advice.

*edit, and for the record I am not saying we do not make mistakes, we do, but so far I catch them before we release, we all make mistakes, but when you advertise a fully authored functional BD and it is not, and then do it again, this makes people very gun shy on downloading anything you share.

Using BD Rebuilder I have a viable Blu-Ray burn that plays on my PS3. It's movie only (no menus or extras), but it does work. 

In my opinion there is something wonky about the version that ie being downloaded, but it all has to do in the BD mastering. Fixing that and it's a viable fan restoration. Audio mixes are all in sync, though I think the Debra Hill commentary is way too loud. PCM vs. DTS is a toss-up as far as which I prefer. They are both terrific. 

This all being said, the official Blu-Ray, while entirely too dark, is naturally superior as far as lack of compression artifacts and grain structure. I think on any screen smaller than 60 inches the fan version preferable. On a screen my size the BD is preferable because the grain is not clumpy or muddy from compression. 

It's amazing how despite the tech used in the film being dated how well the story holds up. it's just an awesome piece of filmmaking.

By the way... Is the Carpenter/Russel commentary ripped from the DVD or was it recorded from the laserdisc? They are the same commentary, but the DVD had certain "controversial" statements removed.

I'm surprised to hear about the playback issues people are having. Personally, I don't have a blu-ray burner, so I don't burn these onto discs. I just copy the entire folder over to my external media player and play it from there - my media player even supports blu-ray disc menus, as long as they aren't Java menus.

This played perfectly fine for me in my media player. The menus all functioned perfectly and the film played through without issue. It may be that my media player is more tolerant of compatibility problems than some blu-ray players are. I know my media player has very wide media support, so that may be why it played perfectly.

I thought the menu looked very professional, and this is by far the best I've ever seen this look. The official blu-ray is far, far too dark for me to enjoy.

For anyone who just wants to rip the movie itself to mkv with no menus, and not lose any quality, I highly recommend MakeMKV. It's free while it's in beta, but don't let the word beta scare you - it's wonderful software that works flawlessly and easily, and it's been in beta for a long time now - just load up the blu-ray folder and select the titles you want to rip - you can keep whatever audio tracks and subtitle tracks you like, and it rips to lossless .mkv with no quality loss of audio or video.

I have a laserdisc audio rip of the LD commentary if you want it.

Had no idea either something was cut on the DVD from that original LD commentary.

Has any progress been made on the authoring issue with this download ?

Thanks so much. Can't wait. Was so excited to see this one.

Andrea, thanks for this! I'll be using your BD25 for another custom compilation, no idea how many discs. Also agreeing with Flexicon9!

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

Happy someone recognized this is a good project, even if it has its compatibility problems... in a near future, I hope to solve those problems, and I'll also improve those three short shots with residual logos!

 Andrea, your projects are absolutely perfect and worthy of multi-disc Blu-ray compilations of films. I'll be buying multi-disc Blu-ray cases just because of your projects, especially for THE THING and Escape from New York. Same goes for any [spoRv] BD25 projects you're doing currently and in the future. Well, as long as I'm interested in the film.

I hope so. I have been dying to see it and was very sad when it didn't work :(

jimjimmyjones85 said:

I hope so. I have been dying to see it and was very sad when it didn't work :(

 Have you used BDRebuilder? Has helped me tons of times in the past.

FremenDar007 said:

jimjimmyjones85 said:

I hope so. I have been dying to see it and was very sad when it didn't work :(

 Have you used BDRebuilder? Has helped me tons of times in the past.

 Thanks. Giving it a shot now.