How to Combine Kill Bill Bluray

Hello all,

I'm new to fanedits so forgive me if this has been covered elsewhere in the forum.  I have not been able to find any specific instructions on how to do what I am trying to do. 

I am pretty good with FCP and iMovie and have filmed and edited many corporate videos but generally work with raw camera footage and my own soundtracks.  I am not sure on how to go about getting bluray encodes into a fully editable state in FCP.  I have many of the apps I believe to be necessary to accomplish this but am not sure on what is the best practice in converting the footage. 

My end goal is to make my own Kill Bill Uncut bluray edit.  I normally use MakeMKV, mkvmerge and Handbrake for my BR backups and drop the resolution down to 720p since 1080p just takes up way to much space with little visible benefit (IMHO).  That being the case I need to know how to import either the raw .mkv files or the 720p Handbrake encodes which end up being .m4v format.

Can anyone share with me their ideas on how to go about this?

Thanks. 

So I think I solved some of my import issues.  I did a test last edit last night using two episodes from Lost BR.  I did my normal process of ripping these two episodes as .mkv then using HB to convert them to .m4v files (my end result is normally to have AppleTV compatible files which need to be .m4v or .mp4).  I then used Mpeg Streamclip to convert these two new .m4v files (not FCP compatible) to .mp4 files.  I was then able to import and edit the two epsiodes together (removing credits, and previously on footage, etc).

Now the issue I have is getting this newly merged and edit movie exported back to an .mp4 or .m4v that can be used with aTV.  I am using FCP 6 so I only seem to have Export to Quicktime and Export to Quicktime Compressor as my export options.  When I tried doing the Export Quicktime Conversion method, I end up with only a .mov file.

Does anyone have any ideas on this?  How can I export to a normal .mp4 file?

Well, after a few days of unsuccessful attempts I am stumped.  I have had a multitude of problems with converting the .mkv files properly and trying to import the rips as different file types for FCP.  I have also had a problem being able to retain the proper 5.1 audio channels and burned in subs for both Kill Bill BR discs. 

Interestingly, I had previously achieved a similar effort years ago with the original Kill Bill dvds using only a few programs (DTOX and DVDShrink and Handbrake).  The resulting file is not the best quality however, and the edit between the two films was done as a timing approximation and not using FCP so it is a harsh cut and not very ideal.  The music cuts inappropriately and their is a rough freeze frame for a few seconds as well.  I want to try something much more professional using FCP.  I am competent enough with FCP editing (have edited several videos from direct import of HD camera footage) so the cuts, music fadeouts and transitioning between the two films is not a problem, nor is editing out the vol 1 title card in the beginning.  But just getting a proper HD import to work with from the BR source and what file type to export that Handbrake can handle are giving me trouble.

Can someone please share with me any kind of work flow that might help me better understand how to complete this attempted project using my BRs and FCP.

My end goal is to have a true 720p (and AppleTV compatible) re-edited Kill Bill "Uncut" that is made from the BluRay discs.  I am trying to not just combine the films, but also remove the end credits and daughter reveal scene from Kill Bill 1, and then remove the entire redundant opening of Kill Bill 2.  I want to be able to export this file as a true HD 720p (1280x720) in .mp4 or .m4v file format and still retain 5.1 digital audio and the proper subs.

Interestingly, I had previously achieved a similar effort years ago with the original Kill Bill dvds using only two programs (DTOX and DVDShrink).  The resulting file is not the best quality however, and the edit between the two films was done as an approximation and not using FCP so it is a harsh cut and not very ideal.  The music cuts inappropriately and their is a rough freeze frame for a few seconds.  I want to try something much more professional using FCP.

Any help would be appreciated at this point.  Thanks.

Are there any members on this site that are familiar with FCP importing and exporting?

After a week of frustration I was able to finally get my files to import properly but the audio has been dropped to 2 channel instead of 5.1  The only file type that I could get FCP to handle without the audio synch issue was AIC.  But I really want to keep the 5.1 audio.  Does anyone know how I can do this?

Any suggestions would be helpful.