The Rise of Skywalker: Ascendant (Released) — Page 600

Thanks so much, guys. I, too, marvel at what we’ve done over the past almost two years.

I got emotional watching the puppet show naturally happen in Ascendant. So many major changes make this a huge improvement. Look what you have made!

I had the end credits playing while working on distribution tonight (bc why not) and got felt those heartstrings being tugged by John Williams’ little friendship motif.

The DVD and TinyEncode versions are now available, but the intermediate version will take a few more hours to encode so I’ll try to get that out in the morning. (It’ll be 1080p instead of 720p that I’ve gone with in the past, but still around 8 or 9GB.)

Also, there’s something special tucked into this V2 release no one’s picked up on yet. Hmmm….

Hal9000, I’ve been following the progress here for a long time and waited for V2 before watching Ascendant. It was worth the wait and this is what the official release should have been.

The sequel trilogy are flawed films and lack any cohesion, but you’ve managed to make them feel worthy. Your fanedits are my go to cuts from now on…for the full saga.

Brilliant work.

I know I’m just echoing everyone else’s sentiments here, but I can’t thank you enough for this, Hal. I’ve been invested in TROS fanediting ever since I walked out of the theater confused and disappointed in December 2019, and it’s amazing to see 2 years of hard work finally pay off. I can’t download the edit now (I’m on vacation in a place with horrible wi-fi), but I know this edit will become my go-to version of the movie, along with this site’s other collaborative sequel edits (TFA Starlight, TLJ Rekindled).

StarkillerAG said:

I know this edit will become my go-to version of the movie, along with this site’s other collaborative sequel edits (TFA Starlight, TLJ Rekindled).

I was in fact wondering if I wouldn’t make a post Christmas ST marathon, and was thinking about what fan edits are around to get a complete set of higher quality than the theatrical cuts:

TFA: I get that Starlight’s is a bit like Hal’s version but with more edits and little things removed? Maybe I’ll check this version to see how it plays then.

TLJ: I actually like the theatrical cut so I think I’ll stick to Hal’s conservative edit which only removes most of the bad little stuff without changing it too drastically.

TROS: let’s roll v2 😃

MalaStrana#2 said:

TFA: I get that Starlight’s is a bit like Hal’s version but with more edits and little things removed? Maybe I’ll check this version to see how it plays then.

I’m not sure that’s an accurate description: Starlight doesn’t really cut out much more than Restructured did. Starlight is more of a revamped version, changing the presentation of the movie to make it feel less like the OT and more like the other two sequels. I’d highly recommend watching it, it’s a really interesting experience.

For me it’s TFA Starlight, TLJ Rekindled, and TROS Ascendant. All three were finalised after TROS’ release and have similar goals - of making the sequel trilogy as consistent as possible, and strengthening the core character arcs. The changes in TFA Starlight and TLJ Rekindled are respectful to the canon, whilst making changes for the better.

StarkillerAG said:

MalaStrana#2 said:

TFA: I get that Starlight’s is a bit like Hal’s version but with more edits and little things removed? Maybe I’ll check this version to see how it plays then.

I’m not sure that’s an accurate description: Starlight doesn’t really cut out much more than Restructured did. Starlight is more of a revamped version, changing the presentation of the movie to make it feel less like the OT and more like the other two sequels. I’d highly recommend watching it, it’s a really interesting experience.

Oki thanks, then I definitely will start with Starlight, then Legendary, and finally Ascendant.

sade1212 said:

…even the 32gb encode has quite apparent compression artifacting. Have you considered a H265 ~40gb version? That’d be a bit of a pain to encode but would hopefully be close to lossless. I’m currently waiting for the 100gb version to trickle down from GDrive but I imagine that’s a little large for most people.

Can you elaborate on which scenes you noticed the artifacts? 32gb should have been sufficient for the 1080p release so I’m wondering if it’s the encoder (NLE’s are not very good with H264 and H265) and also if the artifacts are specific to scenes with VFX work.

EDIT: I watched Ascendant in a VR IMAX theatre so artifacts were not as readily visible to me.

I exported a ProRes master file from FCP7 to import into FCPX for color grading. Then exported a ProRes master from FCPX and fed that to Compressor 4 (current version) for multi-pass, max bitrate encoding to a BluRay-compliant format. (Source material was ripped from BluRay, after all.)

Can you give any examples of compression artifacting you noticed? I can compare and see if they’re in the source, or the ProRes master file.

I wonder if that has more to do with the color LUT, since I’m sure that darkness has less detail or color information to begin with.

All versions on Drive now, torrents of the last version coming soon.

A pox on Lucasfilm for holding onto the deleted scenes like the cowards they are! ✊

Pleased to report that now everything is fully in place!

Hal 9000 said:

I exported a ProRes master file from FCP7 to import into FCPX for color grading. Then exported a ProRes master from FCPX and fed that to Compressor 4 (current version) for multi-pass, max bitrate encoding to a BluRay-compliant format. (Source material was ripped from BluRay, after all.)

Can you give any examples of compression artifacting you noticed? I can compare and see if they’re in the source, or the ProRes master file.

In the 1080p 30+ GB release, there’s some significant banding and blocking in darker scenes which isn’t in the source. Check out the cave at 29m 33s as one example (cave walls have some extreme banding going on which shouldn’t be there in a 30+ GB file. I noticed similar blocking in the early Exegol scenes with Kylo as well.

My initial guess would be the Compressor encoder itself is the culprit (Apple doesn’t handle H264 and H265 well). If not that then the color grading application. It will probably be noticeable on all darker Exegol scenes. I had to use zone settings on an edit of the same title to give extra bitrate to most of the scenes on Exegol to avoid a very large filesize.

EDIT: Here’s what I mean by zones:

–zones <zone0>/<zone1>/… Tweak the bitrate of regions of the video
Each zone is of the form
<start frame>,<end frame>,<option>
where <option> is either
q=<integer> (force QP)
or b=<float> (bitrate multiplier)

Example: This x264 encoder command line would lower the crf to 13 (increasing quality) for frames 0 through 5000 and for frames 8000 through 9000 (note command formatting for Handbrake might be a little different). I found a quantizer of about 13 was pretty good on the Exegol scenes (and a few other scenes) with a crf for everything else around 20. In x264 you can zone the crf instead of q which is much better (note there should be two dashes below, this thread changes it to a long dash).
–zones 0,5000,crf=13/8000,9000,crf=13

OH GOD I WAS OUT FOR 2 DAYS AND WHEN I CAME BACK IT’S ALREADY CHRISTMAS MORNING???

Congratulations to Hal and everyone for the project, so happy that 2 years later we have a far superior version of this movie and all thanks to this community. People like you guys are what make Star Wars worth all the trouble.
Merry Christmas to you all and a Happy New Year 😃

Hmm, I’m not sure I’m looking at the right thing, but I picked a specific moment to evaluate. That is when the serpent slides away and light from outside begins to shine in. I’m looking at the light itself, Rey’s face, and Finn’s silhouette. Doing this I see some fuzzy, compression-y softness. When I look at the ProRes output from FCPX (that is on the Drive) I see it as well. When I look at the FCP7 output (ProRes) that was imported into FCPX for grading, I see it as well. When I look at the raw source material (BluRay ripped to ProRes HQ) I do not see it, and instead see nice, fine grain.

I guess ProRes HQ must just be that much better? It wouldn’t take a lot of effort, just time, to run it through those export/import/encoding passes, leaving things in place. So, let’s see whatever else may roll in for feedback and I’ll tentatively plan to do that after a little while. (What convinced me was seeing it in the ProRes master output, because that’s something I would like to be able to always hand off and have someone do whatever might be needed at any future point.)