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ADigitalMan

User Group
Members
Join date
26-Sep-2004
Last activity
4-Nov-2025
Posts
2,947
Web Site
https://www.youtube.com/@DigitalMan-jc3xy

Post History

Post
#122194
Topic
***The ADigitalMan non-Star Wars DVD Info and Feedback Thread***
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/122194/action/topic#122194
Time
I'm exporting my 5.1 sound for HP1 now. This is the easier of the two, as there were only seven scenes to restore. HP2 has 18 scenes, though I think I only put 16 in.

This would have gone much faster had I saved all my original files. I've gone back and started from scratch to get the 5.1 audio. I will preserve this one on Dual Layer to keep the video untouched, but the SL will likely be the one to get out there.
Post
#121876
Topic
***The ADigitalMan non-Star Wars DVD Info and Feedback Thread***
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/121876/action/topic#121876
Time
I'm capturing with composite, but only because I'm capturing from a VCR with no S-Video Output. If you have S-Video, use it. The signal will be far better in my experience. I've obtained a copy of King Kong/Son of Kong on LD that I'm sending to a laserphile friend along with the canopus. His capture will help make an educated statement on the quality of an S-video capture, but I'm expecting great things.
Post
#121875
Topic
Ultimate/Archival Editions of the OT
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/121875/action/topic#121875
Time
Quote
Originally posted by: ReverendBeastly
Really, those scenes make no sense. Vader and the Emperor at the end of ANH would ruin the cliffhanger of Vader flying off into space


RB, I REALLY hope you like what I did at the end of ANH when you get a chance to see it. I think I did a good job of handling this issue respectfully without screwing up the film itself, setting ESB to rights in the process as well.

If GL could see this maybe, just maybe, he might actually say "you know, that works a whole lot better." Not that he ever, ever, EVER admits his mistakes.

If Lucasfilm were to use half the stuff we've come up with on these boards, the general reaction to his changes would be far more positive. And if he'd just release the unmolested OT, nobody would care if he put Gungans and Ewoks into Episode IV for his Ultimate Archival Extreme Editions.
Post
#121572
Topic
Batman Begins
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/121572/action/topic#121572
Time
Sad fact: about 90% of the quotable quotes on the IMDB listing for Hudson Hawk were entered by yours truly. About a decade ago I stayed up all night with HH in the VCR, a remote in one hand, and my laptop on my lap, getting each of those great lines down word-for-word and submitted. Probably half of the trivia came from me too.

Hudson Hawk, IMHO, was so far over the heads of critics that it moved faster than their brains (or pens) could work. They hated it because they just didn't get it. They showed up for Die Hard and got Moonlighting-meets-Airplane. I've seen that film probably a hundred times and I catch something new every time. And now, with the popularity of the Da Vinci Code, it seems more relevant than ever. They could re-release next summer and use a marketing strategy like Manhunter used after the success of Silence of the Lambs.

I can see the trailer now. Don Fontaine's bosso profundo announcing:

"Before Robert Langdon cracked the Da Vinci Code, Eddie Hawkins went in search of a cup of coffee. If you thought you'd learned all the secrets of Leonardo Da Vinci, you ain't seen nothin' yet."

Various clips of hijinks follow.

"And now, for it's fifteenth anniversary, see the movie that nobody saw the first time around. Catch the Excitement! Catch the Adventure! Catch the Hawk! Bruce Willis is .... Hudson Hawk."

Close with the quote of Richard E. Grant saying:

"If Leonardo Da Vinci were alive today, he'd be eating microwave sushi naked in the back of a Cadillac with the both of us!"
Post
#121500
Topic
Batman Begins
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/121500/action/topic#121500
Time
Wow. Thread killer, huh? Wasn't intended to be one.

I saw the official movie guide today at Borders. Way cool, though if I'd read it before I saw the movie, I'd be pissed. I do love the character twist at Bruce's party. I was really concerned about why Ra's Al Ghul was cast the way he was. I like how it all turned out. That's all I'll say for risk of spoiling it for anybody who hasn't seen it yet.

And if you haven't, instead of watching ROTS for the 72nd time, take a trip to Gotham next time you're at the multiplex. This movie renewed my faith that not all filmmakers are soulless bloodsuckers. Nolan clearly has respect for the craft of filmmaking and it shows in every frame.
Post
#121498
Topic
Babylon 5
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/121498/action/topic#121498
Time
I was really into the show during its run. The third season was some of the best written television of its time ... and perhaps ever. The writer known affectionaltely as JMS used to hang out online in the newsgroup and interact with all of us bozos daily. Back before the internet became a household appliance.

It's interesting just how many parallels there are to Lord of the Rings. JMS admittedly was all but writing Lord of the Rings in space.
Post
#121207
Topic
***The ADigitalMan non-Star Wars DVD Info and Feedback Thread***
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/121207/action/topic#121207
Time
I haven't tried scenalyzer but I'm open to anything. I know that WinDV has been pretty bulletproof, as it's a no-frills package. I've found firewire drives to be more reliable than IDE drives when capturing. I've had dropped frames on my IDE drive, which have resulted in me trashing a capture and starting all over again.

I do wish the Canopus allowed for captures other than DV. I can't capture an uncompressed signal with it. I was unaware of that when I purchased it, else I'd just have invested in a straight video card. Still, it's been decent. The only truly crummy looking capture I've done so far is The Delicate Sound of Thunder. With all its slo-mo and smoke, the end result really didn't look good, even at 8000 kbits/sec. But with full PCM audio, I had to tell myself, which is more important, to hear the show or to watch the show?
Post
#121140
Topic
***The ADigitalMan non-Star Wars DVD Info and Feedback Thread***
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/121140/action/topic#121140
Time
The KwikSpell scene is on the HP2 disc in region1. There were 18 deleted scenes total on that disc. I restored all but one ... of them coming across the car in the woods. That one ruined the surprise reappearance when Aragog's children started to attack Harry and Ron.

I'm going to do this all over again, though, as I wasn't happy with the audio sync.
Post
#121138
Topic
<strong>The &quot;ADigitalMan Special Editions&quot; DVD Info and Feedback Thread</strong> (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/121138/action/topic#121138
Time
It's a pretty easy program. You have a timeline which you can drag the m2v file onto in one track, and two audio tracks onto for your AC3 files. Having two makes it pretty easy to set up crossfades and the like. Make a hard cut, drag the new clip from the first track down onto the second track, then extend the "borders" of the clips and create manual fades. I'm oversimplifying, of course, but a little experimentation (especially with right-clicking on everything you see) will unveil a world of options.
Post
#120990
Topic
<strong>The &quot;ADigitalMan Special Editions&quot; DVD Info and Feedback Thread</strong> (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/120990/action/topic#120990
Time
Hal, I use Womble MPEG Video Wizard, which is a slightly more robust program. I'm not sure if the export tool is the same as the MPEG-VCR, but if it is, the export window has four tabs, for [General] [Video] [Audio] [Monitor]. On the General tab, you can either "separate" the one designated output file into two files (a video file and an audio file) or they can be "multiplexed" into one file, where those two quoted terms actually toggle the function back and forth on the interface.
Post
#120713
Topic
<strong>The &quot;ADigitalMan Special Editions&quot; DVD Info and Feedback Thread</strong> (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/120713/action/topic#120713
Time
Originally posted by: Darth Editous
ADM, did you have to do any resyncing (by eye/ear) during your edit? Or did you just make sure you took out the same amount of audio as video when you made a cut?


A little of both. What I did first was make straight cuts in the audio where the video was made. Then, I would slide the audio cut point to something a little more palettable. Weird thing about Womble, it treats everything as 29.97, even if it's 23.976, repeating the 6th frame for you when you work with it. The end export would lose frames occasionally that I don't think were dropped frames, but were simply where cuts were made on a "repeated" frame. That's my guess anyway.

So, I generated a reference copy of the mix and noted how many frames it was off from the final video. I loaded this reference copy into vegas and squeezed it the appropriate amount of frames to match where it should have fallen with the video.

I then went back to the source AC3 files and used Hypercube Transcoder to rip the streams to individual mono wavs, then loaded those wav's into vegas, grouped them by source, and set up the surround panning to match where it should be.

I then started the painstaking process in Vegas (I only use the Audio part of it) of listening to the squeezed stereo reference mix and the original WAV files at the same time. Whenever a cut was detected in the reference copy, I rebuilt the cut in the surround mix, crossfading the audio so it would sound seamless. Often, I'd try different envelope shapes to find just the right fade shape for the particular cut. On Ep I and II this was a total nightmare because there were so many little cuts here and there.

Eventually I got through it all. I then removed the stereo reference WAV and generated the resulting 5.1 AC3. I muxed it, watched it, and every time something was noticed (in video, audio, or subtitles), I would return to the source, tweak, re-export, re-mux, burn, re-watch. I probably did a dozen rounds of fine-tuning in this manner on each movie.

Sometimes the sync appeared a little off so I'd tweak something there visually. "There it is R4, our missing planet, Kamino" sticks out in my mind as a line that was out of sync. It's actually a bad ADR job, as it's still out of sync, even thought part of the line now matches Ewan's lips.

Anyway, the goal was to eventually get through the movie without finding anything. Every time I thought I was there, I'd find another little something misbehaving. Clearly I even missed one that's prompted this "recall" I'm doing on Ep I.

I once had a boss that called this kind of meticulous, anal-retentive attention to detail "the endless pursuit of needless perfection."

My wife calls it "spending too much time on the damn computer doing Star Wars bulls#!t."

I don't sleep much. B-{