Star Wars Episode I: The Rise of Naboo (v3.5 released) — Page 3

Gee, thanks windows update.

So, my computer is a Windows 10, and it got updated last night, for better or worse. I’m going with worse since it altered the color settings I originally had. The new settings have affected my color grading, and what was once a pretty good LUT is now a rotten one where the brightness looks too dark, the contrast looks too high, and the skin tones look too red. I will be calibrating my monitor shortly to try and make sure that the colors are as accurate as can be, but I may be faced with no choice but to change the LUT. I’ll post an update if I decide to change it.

So after the shock of my monitor getting its color scheme changed, I was able to recalibrate my display to the best of its ability. I looked over the color LUTs again, and I’ve switched from the Blackmagic 4.6K Film to Extended Video v4 LUT to the Blackmagic 4K Film to Extended Video v4 LUT. I’ve also figured out how to take screengrabs, but I’ve yet to learn how to post jpegs on here (I guess they have to be on Github in order to qualify if the markdown-it demo is any indication).

In other news, I’ve finished sound editing on audio track 2 and I’m now officially halfway through sound editing (I’ve edited audio tracks 1, 2, and 3 so far). At this point, cross-fading has become my new best friend, especially on the channels that are soundtracks and effects only. I have no idea what this is all gonna sound like with an actual 5.1 surround sound home theatre setup, since I don’t have one to test it out. I hope the audio doesn’t sound too choppy without most of the droid voices, Jar Jar’s sound effects, and Anakin’s “whoas” and “yippees”. Still, I can hear the improvements to the sound quality growing now that I’m editing each track individually, rather than all 6 of them at once. Despite the concerns of choppiness for the stuff I’ve taken out, the crossfades are really making the audio sound a whole lot better now that I’m going into the nitty-gritty bits.

And in even more good news, I got Jackpumpkinhead’s Custom Crawl Creator 2.0 and while it was designed for version 2.79 in Blender (My version is 2.9), the download came with a very helpful video on how to use it, and I’ve been able to overcome most of the differences so far. I’ve already got the text into the creator, and now I just have to worry about getting the background stars screengrab (Which is arguably the hardest part). Still, it’s beginning to look like Christmas with the opening crawl.

So, things are beginning to fall into place. The only disappointment I’m dealing with right now is not being competent enough to put jpeg images onto a post, which is a petty thing to be disappointed about. Still, if you want to see some LUT examples, and you happen to know how to post jpegs on here, I’d be happy to hear your reply.

Video transitions and wipes are close to finished. I have just one more audio channel to go in the sound editing stage. I’m gonna give the opening crawl a small rewrite due to the unfortunate realization that I can’t get rid of the jedi being sent by Chancellor Valorum. Otherwise, I think my edit is close to completion. If it isn’t done in the next few days, it will be in a couple of weeks. Once I’ve completed the finishing touches, I’m gonna export the edit onto a flash drive and see how it looks on my HDTV (to make sure everything looks right, and so I can write down the final list of changes, which is gonna be long).

Then, there’s the issue of what happens next, which I haven’t thought about until now. I will probably get an account on fanedit.org and let them know that this exists. Beyond that, I have no idea what the next step will be. I will be happy to PM the links to anyone who asks when it’s completed.

Finished sound editing last night. I had some troubles with blender on the opening crawl, but I decided to uninstall blender 2.9 and install blender 2.79 instead, which solved my problems. The rendering was so long, I went to sleep before it finished, but I woke up to a completely rendered opening crawl that should be a vast improvement over the original.

So, with all that done, I’m now in the process of completing the edit. I don’t want to say it’s complete right now, since that might be too soon. I’m currently exporting the file to an h.264 file, which might take the whole day to finish. Then, because my HDTV is finicky with certain files, I’m going to see if it will play on my TV. If not, I will try converting it to an MKV file, since my TV seems to take those files pretty well.

If things go right, I will then prepare for the process of getting the word out about this edit. I will probably start by editing a trailer for my particular edit. However, I have no idea where to begin, and I don’t know how to work on the titles. I also realized just now that I forgot to make some special thanks credits for everyone who had a hand in making this edit possible. Oh, and a logo to make this more of a fanedit. And a disclaimer about all the legalese surrounding fanedits (a.k.a. this edit must not be bought or sold, you must own the official source, and yadda yadda yadda).

So, while the edit is about 98% to 99% done, it’s not over yet. I will let you know how things go with the file once I’ve given it a watch.

In the meantime, I’m pulling out my DVD copy of Episode I and making the long, long, long list of changes while I’m waiting for the export to finish. I will post an update once I’ve put it up.

yeah,that is good news, but did you edit the soundtrack of the movie? Just curious.

Skybatman said:

yeah,that is good news, but did you edit the soundtrack of the movie? Just curious.

It depends on what you define as the soundtrack. If you’re asking whether I took out whole tracks to scenes, the answer is no. If you’re asking whether I’ve edited certain bits and pieces from the soundtrack, then yes I have. With that said, I have been able to use crossfades to make the seams less obvious, but they are still there.

Anyway, I’ve just finished watching the original 136-minute DVD I own, and writing down all the changes I could find. I will be updating the opening post on the changes soon.

Eyepainter said:

Skybatman said:

yeah,that is good news, but did you edit the soundtrack of the movie? Just curious.

It depends on what you define as the soundtrack. If you’re asking whether I took out whole tracks to scenes, the answer is no. If you’re asking whether I’ve edited certain bits and pieces from the soundtrack, then yes I have. With that said, I have been able to use crossfades to make the seams less obvious, but they are still there.

Anyway, I’ve just finished watching the original 136-minute DVD I own, and writing down all the changes I could find. I will be updating the opening post on the changes soon.

List of changes are up now. Hope it isn’t too long.

i see it, it looks interesting. I
wanna watch this

I was right to avoid saying it was complete. The export has been showing some technical difficulties with the audio. When I converted the film to h.264, there was no audio at all whatsoever. I tried exporting it again last night. This time, I tried customizing the audio by changing output track 1 from main 1(stereo) to all timeline tracks. That sorta worked. I did get audio from this file, but the problem is that the dialogue wasn’t around.

I’ll keep working on this. I’m sure I’ll find out how to fix the audio eventually, but it might take a while, since it takes hours to export the file. I might even try converting it to a different file type to see if the options change. If you’ve had a similar issue with exporting audio in DaVinci Resolve, and you found a solution, I could use it.

Eyepainter said:

I was right to avoid saying it was complete. The export has been showing some technical difficulties with the audio. When I converted the film to h.264, there was no audio at all whatsoever. I tried exporting it again last night. This time, I tried customizing the audio by changing output track 1 from main 1(stereo) to all timeline tracks. That sorta worked. I did get audio from this file, but the problem is that the dialogue wasn’t around.

I’ll keep working on this. I’m sure I’ll find out how to fix the audio eventually, but it might take a while, since it takes hours to export the file. I might even try converting it to a different file type to see if the options change. If you’ve had a similar issue with exporting audio in DaVinci Resolve, and you found a solution, I could use it.

I suppose it’s been long enough since my last post. However, not much has changed. I’m stuck in the export stage for right now. I tried exporting the file last night, but a dreadful thing happened. I don’t know why this happens, but on occasion, Davinci Resolve closes on me without any warning whatsoever. It’s happened to me a lot during the editing stage, and it gave me a real motivation to save often. However, it’s now becoming an issue when I’m rendering the file. I’ve tried exporting it twice already, and both times, Resolve closed in the middle of the export.

I will keep exporting the file. It’s just gonna take a lot longer than I expected. Right now, I’m rendering the file in the quicktime format with an h.264 codec. So far, it’s doing alright. My hope is that the file will make it to 100% and without the audio being screwed over. I’ll update everyone when I get a complete export file that works. I don’t know how long it will take, but it’ll happen eventually.

I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that I finally got a file that works. It’s an mp4 file with an h.264 codec. It took a few changes, but it works on both my computer and my HDTV.

The bad news is that the file went through some quality changes. On the video side, I was exporting the file to 2496x1080 to get the highest resolution possible, but it was too high for my 1080p HDTV. Thus, I brought the resolution down to 1920x830. (Don’t panic. The 830 is because I cropped out the black areas on the top and bottom, making for a smaller file with the same quality.) So, the file is just gonna be plain ol’ 1080p, but I guess I had no choice with that one. Either way, it’ll still look good. The other quality change (and one I intend to fix) is that the audio is only AAC 1.0. Yeah, it’s in mono. I’m gonna see what I can do about making it 5.1 over the next few days.

So that’s the story for now. I’m getting the hang of exporting, and I need to improve the audio. I’m going to watch the edit on my HDTV sometime this evening to see if the color grading looks right. If not, I’ll have to go back and fix that too. Still not finished, but getting closer.

So your edit is gonna be 1080p? And one more thing, did you change something in the maul vs obi wan fight ?

Skybatman said:

So your edit is gonna be 1080p? And one more thing, did you change something in the maul vs obi wan fight ?

For the time being, yes, it is 1080p. I would go for 4K if I could, but my computer isn’t in 4K, so I would be editing the film blind. Plus, I just don’t have 4K files for the prequels. Besides that, the 1080p version I have is sourced from a 2001 HDTV airing, and it’s one of the few HD sources that features the original muppet Yoda (instead of CGI Yoda. Although I’m guessing the next two will not be so lucky). It’s possible that I could download the original 2496x1080 file in .mp4 to make it somewhat higher in resolution for 4K screens, but I have no idea whether that would look right on a 4K screen, as my HDTV is just 1080p. I just know that the 2496x1080 didn’t work on my HDTV, so I can only assume that others will have a similar negative experience.

As for the climactic Darth Maul confrontation, I have kept nearly all of it intact with the exception of two tiny changes.

The first is the moment when Darth Maul dances around the room and uses the force on something on the floor to open a door (Why he didn’t just throw it at the jedi could be anybody’s guess). That moment was pretty dumb, so I cut it out. The second change is Darth Maul’s reaction shot at the end of the fight. Taking advice from the l8wrtr fanedit on this one, I always thought that Maul’s “Huh? What’s he thinking?” reaction was also kind of dumb. Plus, it makes more sense if Maul is caught off guard by Obi-Wan’s using the force on Qui-Gon’s lightsaber, rather than Maul wondering what Obi-Wan’s thinking and getting killed by his own stupidity.

Just finished watching my edit on the HDTV. I think the edit is close to perfect, but the color grading is not. As it turns out, my computer lied to me on what the movie was gonna look like on my TV. The main problems I found are that the movie is too dark, and the skin tones are still too red. I’m thinking of going into the gain, gamma, and lift features of Resolve to see if they can fix those problems. I might even change the LUT to one of the brighter and less colorful LUTs altogether. I’ll have to test the changes on my HDTV again to see if they look right, but for now, I’m going back to color grading again.

Thanks to YouTube, I figured out how to export the movie in AAC 5.1 surround sound. The only thing that’s being a nuisance at this point is the color grading.

After seeing the sufferings of the previous file from being too dark and suffering from red skin tones, I went back, changed the LUT to something brighter, and exported a new file with the changed LUT. This time, I had the opposite problem. It was too bright. Blacks definitely looked grey with this new one. So now, I’m gonna change things up by resetting everything. I’m beginning to feel like Goldilocks now. I’m trying to get the color grade just right.

This time, I’m gonna play with the lift, gamma, and gain controls without the usage of an LUT. That seems to be the way most editors on resolve do their color grading anyway. I’m very close to calling this fanedit complete, but I’m going to work on perfecting the color grading first. Once I’m satisfied with the color grade, I will officially declare this fanedit complete.

Yes. YES! YEEESSS!!!

Ladies and gentlemen, the fanedit is now complete. That’s right. The theatrical release cut. The subtitles written. The video transitions added. The color grading done. The sound edited. The file exported. The edit finished.

Now that the edit is done, I will be focusing my attention less on the edit itself and more on where it goes from here. So let’s talk about that.

The first thing I need to take care of is… Credits. More specifically, I want to throw in some special thanks credits at the end of the fanedit for everyone who helped make this edit a reality. However, I have no idea how that’s done. I will look around on YouTube to see if I can find anything that deals with the subject.

I will also need to put up a disclaimer on fan edits at the beginning to remind people that they need to own the official source first, and that the edit should never be bought or sold. This is kind of in the same ballpark as the special thanks credits, although I don’t feel the need to make the disclaimer too fancy.

Then, of course, I will need to work on my logo for the start of the fanedit to lessen the chances of the edit getting flagged for copyright infringement. However, I have no idea what to use in order to make it. The only program I have right now is Inkscape (which is where my eye avatar comes from, by the way). But I don’t know how to adjust the page to 1080p 16:9, if it’s at all possible. Nor do I know how to send the logo onto Resolve. So, that’s gonna be something I will be looking into.

One more thing that’s on my mind… Releasing it. I would like to start making a trailer, but I just realized I’m missing something important. The title. Something every trailer needs. Another thing that I’m confused about is how to send the file out on the web for all to download. Mainly because I’ve never done it before. I also admit that I’m a complete buffoon when it comes to things like disc artwork, fan art, blu-ray covers, etc. I could use a lot of help from others on this one. If you’d like to give out your two cents, feel free to post them. If your two cents are on the sensitive side, feel free to PM me.

That is good news my friend, congratulations

Some more good news. I figured out how to write the disclaimer and special thanks credits by myself. All I did was insert a scroll for the special thanks credits at the end, and a text insert for the disclaimer at the beginning. I changed the font on both of them to the same font as my subtitles (Franklin Gothic Demi Cond, FYI), and I changed the color to a light blue to give them a Star Wars-style look. I like them both.

I also found out I didn’t delete my DVD rips. As it turns out, I ripped the theatrical trailers which contained… The title! Okay, it’s in standard definition, but as long as the title is readable, I don’t think anyone is going to care. I just started work on the trailer, and I managed to assemble 7 1/2 minutes of footage. Since most trailers are often 2 1/2 minutes in length, that’s enough footage to work with.

The only thing that hasn’t been taken care of is my logo. I have no idea where to create one, and I believe it’s necessary to throw one on there at the beginning of the edit so that I don’t get in trouble for copyright infringement. If you know a good spot to create a logo, feel free to let me know.

Okay, never mind about the logo. I found out I could just load up my eye icon and throw in some text on Resolve. Why I didn’t think of it before, I shall never know.

With that hassle out of the way, I’ve got my trailer close to complete. I’m gonna see if I can make a few adjustments before I send it out to YouTube or Vimeo or whatever internet video platform I can find. Be on the lookout. The trailer is coming.

When is coming out the trailer ?

When is coming out the trailer ?

Right now, as a matter of fact. It’s on YouTube. I don’t think I can post the link due to some of the rules here, but you can search for it on YouTube. If you’re still having trouble, feel free to PM me for it.

Can you sent me a link ?

Skybatman said:

Can you sent me a link ?

Sure.

Now that the trailer is up, my attention is now focused on releasing the edit. I have the .mov file ready and I’m working on downloading the .mp4 version as of right now. The only challenge is finding a digital locker to put them in.

Also, I just bought a microphone and a pop filter, so when it comes in the mail, I’ll be working on recording a commentary track. So, if that interests you, I suggest having a little more patience, as the current files do not have a commentary track right now.

I will PM the links to everyone who has assisted or contributed to this edit when I find a good place for the download. PM me if you want the links, and I will be happy to send it to you when it is released.