Harmy's RETURN OF THE JEDI Despecialized Edition HD - V3.1 — Page 76

Harmy said:

The formats I released are:
MKV - large 720p file with tons of audio options, some of them lossless, that can be losslessly turned into a Blu-Ray using TsMuxerGUI and burned to a BD25.

AVCHD - smaller 720p file with less audio options, all with lossy compression, and slightly less good video quality, which can however be burned to a DVD9 and played back on most Blu-Ray players.

Then Chewtobacca also turned the MKV version into an NTSC DVD5, which is good quality for DVD but pretty bad compared to the HD versions.

Versions 1.0 were only available in the AVCHD format, which is why ROTJ v1.0 is only available as such.
The workprint of ROTJ v2.0 was never meant to be a wide release, which is why it’s only a smaller MKV file, but the encoding is done in a way that it can be losslessly turned into an AVCHD with TsMuxerGUI and burned on a DVD9 and played back on most Blu-Ray players.

The final ROTJ v2.0 will again have the same formats as the other v2 versions - MKV, AVCHD, NTSC DVD5.

thank you for the clarification!

towne32 said:

No. I think it’s my fault for trying to discuss too many options in single posts.

What format do you want the movies in? We can go from there.

ok thanks for narrowing this down. plus i think i may be trying to learn too much too fast!

so here it does…

i would like to be able to burn the highest quality option on to a standard dvd with a standard dvd writer. regardless if i have to play on blu ray or standard player. please tell me which file i should use. thanks again to OT for all your help.

Regards, joey

towne32 said:

As far as burners go, if you wanted to do that, I got an external Samsung one for about $70 (at the time) that works great.

PS-can you please tell me which model you use?

thanks, joey

I use this thing: http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-External-Blu-ray-SE-506CB-RSBDE/dp/B00JJGFRIQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452194478&sr=8-1&keywords=samsung+blu-ray+writer

But, to be clear, this is for writing to blu-ray discs! (BD-R).

In your other post, you want to write to DVD. IF that is true, and you do not want to buy a blu-ray writer, you download the AVCHD versions and burn to DVD9 with a dvd burner and play in a blu-ray player that supports AVCHD (many of them do).

If you want to buy the blu-ray writer, and a few BD-R discs, you’ll end up with somewhat better quality and the ability to play on any blu-ray drive.

Let’s just go a step further here and cover all the bases. If you buy a Blu-ray burner you can write both to Blu-ray writable discs and to DVD writable discs. With a Blu-ray burner you can do anything you want, up to burning a working Blu-ray (single layer BD25 disc) from the full quality MKV (once you convert with TsMuxerGUI).

If you want to go cheaper on your drive purchase and just burn the DVD versions, you can get just a DVD burner. With this you can burn the AVCHD versions to a DVD9 (these are double layer DVDs, which are more expensive than single layer “DVD5”, but often comparable to or cheaper than BDR discs), these can be played in MOST Blu-ray players, but not in any standard DVD players.

If you want to burn a disc that you can play in any player, be it Blu-ray player or just a DVD player, then you’d want to jump down in quality all the way to the standard definition NTSC DVD5 version. It will play in anything because it is just a normal single layer DVD, no Blu-ray formatting of any kind and appropriately reduced quality. Not the best looking or sounding by a long shot, but it will work in anything.

Alternatively, if you skip disc burning and just want to play the files off a USB drive, just make sure it isn’t formatted to FAT32, or it will go over the file size limit.

If I can just add my 2 cents, I think buying a Blu-Ray Burner and converting the .mkv file in
TsMuxer is the safest option by far. Before doing that myself I wound up with AVCHD that would
freeze, work intermittently, etc. (due to compatibility issues with my blu-ray player, no slight
on the despecialized video files obv). Think of it this way. Would you pay $100.00 to have the
OOT on Blu-Ray? If yes, the burner should run you $70-$80 and the discs about $30 (for a stack of 15).
My guess is that anyone on these forums is willing to spend the $100.

vmancini said:

If I can just add my 2 cents, I think buying a Blu-Ray Burner and converting the .mkv file in
TsMuxer is the safest option by far. Before doing that myself I wound up with AVCHD that would
freeze, work intermittently, etc. (due to compatibility issues with my blu-ray player, no slight
on the despecialized video files obv). Think of it this way. Would you pay $100.00 to have the
OOT on Blu-Ray? If yes, the burner should run you $70-$80 and the discs about $30 (for a stack of 15).
My guess is that anyone on these forums is willing to spend the $100.

Indeed. Plus, I’ve found enough other fanedits and preservations around here to burn to BD that it has been more than worth it, in my opinion. I only got the BD-R drive for OT/FE purposes.

Also, recordable DVD media tend to have poor reflectivity and shelf life, even the better brands. If you stick with Verbatim BD-Rs, they work incredibly well in my experience.

Yes. WP simply had 1.0 color.

vmancini said:

If I can just add my 2 cents, I think buying a Blu-Ray Burner and converting the .mkv file in
TsMuxer is the safest option by far. Before doing that myself I wound up with AVCHD that would
freeze, work intermittently, etc. (due to compatibility issues with my blu-ray player, no slight
on the despecialized video files obv). Think of it this way. Would you pay $100.00 to have the
OOT on Blu-Ray? If yes, the burner should run you $70-$80 and the discs about $30 (for a stack of 15).
My guess is that anyone on these forums is willing to spend the $100.

Hello noscript.

Discs are a hell of a lot cheaper than that on Amazon, FWIW.

Yeah but they’re made by five-year-olds.

(I buy all sorts of crap on Amazon)

towne32 said:

vmancini said:

Indeed. Plus, I’ve found enough other fanedits and preservations around here to burn to BD that it has been more than worth it, in my opinion. I only got the BD-R drive for OT/FE purposes.

(can you please define…of/fe purposes)

thanks…im gonna move towards getting that burner that towne32 mentioned on amazon. but i just have a couple more questions…

it was mentioned i could use i usb drive but it would have to be reformatted…can someone please point me to some instructions on how to reformat? also can someone recommend a blu ray player with a usb drive that would be able to play these files? my tv is a bit older and does not have a usb drive but does have plenty of free hdmi ports?

thanks again for all these great insights from everyone!

Regards, joey

If you’re going to get the Blu-ray burner, you won’t need the blu-ray player with USB port. Do you already have a blu-ray player? If not, and you find one with usb (I don’t have recommendations, as I don’t have one like that), you can skip the blu-ray burner if you want.

As for the ‘purposes’, I just meant that there are other projects here and on fanedit.org where either blu-ray quality fanedits are made, or movies are preserved in their original format before some type of change was made (as with Star Wars), or the film was never released on blu-ray, etc.

I ask the world again, how is jumping through all these hoops to burn/play discs (if you have to buy the burners or players) or trying to force the files into things that don’t really want to play them (like smart TVs/Blu-ray players/cable boxes or PS3/4/XBOXes, etc.), considered easier or better than just hooking a computer up to your TV or, better yet, A/V receiver and playing the files unaltered?

Any number of cheap options exist, from hooking up a laptop you already have, buying a super cheap NUC or LIVA, or even grabbing a really inexpensive FireTV Stick and sideloading Kodi…

yoda-sama said:

I ask the world again, how is jumping through all these hoops to burn/play discs (if you have to buy the burners or players) or trying to force the files into things that don’t really want to play them (like smart TVs/Blu-ray players/cable boxes or PS3/4/XBOXes, etc.), considered easier or better than just hooking a computer up to your TV or, better yet, A/V receiver and playing the files unaltered?

Any number of cheap options exist, from hooking up a laptop you already have, buying a super cheap NUC or LIVA, or even grabbing a really inexpensive FireTV Stick and sideloading Kodi…

I have all of these options at my disposal. First of all, any streaming option that downsamples the video is straight out of the question.

Hooking up my laptop by HDMI is a pain in the ass, and means I would need to drag out the corresponding HDD or otherwise store a bunch of 25-50gb images on my laptop, ready to go. I use it to test things, etc. Another problem is the color display calibration is way different from my calibrated TV. So I would need to calibrate another profile for that.

As my PS3 is hacked to play MKVs and use NTFS drives, that is the most straight forward way to play them and often what I do. For things that I intend to keep as long as possible, I burn to BD-R to put on the shelf and keep as a physical backup to whatever HDD(s) it may be on. It also allows for portability so I can easily bring it to a friend’s house, or make a 1:1 copy to give to a friend in some cases.

I only included burning discs in that rant for the times when the convoluted methods people choose involve buying hardware (for burning, playback or–strangely–both). I’m not even against Joey getting a good Blu-ray burner, he should, but he doesn’t sound like he knows what he wants. He sounds like he’s on the fence between burning discs, buying a Blu-ray player with a USB port (seemingly in addition to burning discs), and figuring out how to format a USB drive. He has said nothing I can remember about gifting copies of the DeEd to friends/family or having desire to make a display box for discs. The one concrete bit of information he does offer up is that he has plenty of extra HDMI inputs. I’d say he’s a good candidate for considering just hooking up a computer to his TV and being done with it, unless he does want to do some of those disc-specific uses you mention.

I don’t see how a Blu-ray player connected over HDMI to a TV is supposed to look dramatically different than a PC hooked up the exact same way, I think your calibration comment is moot in this instance.

yoda-sama said:

I only included burning discs in that rant for the times when the convoluted methods people choose involve buying hardware (for burning, playback or–strangely–both). I’m not even against Joey getting a good Blu-ray burner, he should, but he doesn’t sound like he knows what he wants. He sounds like he’s on the fence between burning discs, buying a Blu-ray player with a USB port (seemingly in addition to burning discs), and figuring out how to format a USB drive. He has said nothing I can remember about gifting copies of the DeEd to friends/family or having desire to make a display box for discs. The one concrete bit of information he does offer up is that he has plenty of extra HDMI inputs. I’d say he’s a good candidate for considering just hooking up a computer to his TV and being done with it, unless he does want to do some of those disc-specific uses you mention.

I agree. I’m having a hard time getting him to settle on one medium. I want to present options and he seems to go for more than one of them at a time, so I do not think I am doing a good job. Either way, he has said nothing about having a laptop with HDMI out.

I don’t see how a Blu-ray player connected over HDMI to a TV is supposed to look dramatically different than a PC hooked up the exact same way, I think your calibration comment is moot in this instance.

I strongly disagree.

towne32 said:

I have all of these options at my disposal. First of all, any streaming option that downsamples the video is straight out of the question.

As my PS3 is hacked to play MKVs and use NTFS drives, that is the most straight forward way to play them and often what I do. For things that I intend to keep as long as possible, I burn to BD-R to put on the shelf and keep as a physical backup to whatever HDD(s) it may be on. It also allows for portability so I can easily bring it to a friend’s house, or make a 1:1 copy to give to a friend in some cases.

I didn’t say anything about downsampling, the whole point of using a computer is to avoid that, even the FireTV Stick option I stated to sideload Kodi, which plays the file straight, not downsampled like Plex or something along those lines would do.

And it is great that you have a hacked PS3 as your straight forward way to play files, but you do realize that this is very much the equivalent of having a PC dedicated to being a straight forward way to play files… It is the exact same point I was making, just with a slightly different hardware choice.

yoda-sama said:

towne32 said:

I have all of these options at my disposal. First of all, any streaming option that downsamples the video is straight out of the question.

As my PS3 is hacked to play MKVs and use NTFS drives, that is the most straight forward way to play them and often what I do. For things that I intend to keep as long as possible, I burn to BD-R to put on the shelf and keep as a physical backup to whatever HDD(s) it may be on. It also allows for portability so I can easily bring it to a friend’s house, or make a 1:1 copy to give to a friend in some cases.

I didn’t say anything about downsampling, the whole point of using a computer is to avoid that, even the FireTV Stick option I stated to sideload Kodi, which plays the file straight, not downsampled like Plex or something along those lines would do.

And it is great that you have a hacked PS3 as your straight forward way to play files, but you do realize that this is very much the equivalent of having a PC dedicated to being a straight forward way to play files… It is the exact same point I was making, just with a slightly different hardware choice.

edit: nevermind

CatBus said:

yoda-sama said:

I don’t see how a Blu-ray player connected over HDMI to a TV is supposed to look dramatically different than a PC hooked up the exact same way, I think your calibration comment is moot in this instance.

If your TV is calibrated for rec.709 for your Blu-ray player, but it isn’t calibrated for RGB for your PC, then it very much will look different, and the Blu-ray will be better. Since most calibrators only calibrate for rec.709 anyway, it’s very non-moot.

I’m not saying the point is not a good one in general, but I’m pretty sure the guy who can’t settle on one option to play the DeEd and can’t format a USB drive isn’t going to have a screen that’s already specially calibrated for one HDMI source over another. I meant it is moot to him, and even bringing it up could confuse him further.

And since my original general rant has now ended up laser focused on Joey, we should really focus on figuring out what he’s wanting. Is he wanting this just for personal use, or to share with friends/family, is he seeing buying a burner and/or player or formatting a USB drive (have we even figured out what he was trying to plug it into?) as his only hope to watch it on a TV? Does he have a computer he can use temporarily (or permanently), if he JUST wants to watch the movies? Does he want a pretty BD case? …Is his TV professionally calibrated?

All this talk of calibration or the ways you guys might like to archive stuff or make boxes, etc. is not coming from anything he’s said, but what you like to do. Let’s get his actual requirements first, and then see if any of our preferences fit his needs before we push anything else on him.

yoda-sama said:

All this talk of calibration or the ways you guys might like to archive stuff or make boxes, etc. is not coming from anything he’s said, but what you like to do. Let’s get his actual requirements first, and then see if any of our preferences fit his needs before we push anything else on him.

I’m totally with you on that. These things we have said have been in direct response to your question about why anyone would choose blu-ray. They should not be applied to his situation, necessarily.

We were in the midst of trying to get him to understand the different options, and what the requirements are for each of them. He has been getting his wires crossed with all of the various options, so we were trying to make it more clear for him before this tangent occurred.