ChainsawAsh

About the holograms and such:

I'm pretty sure Scott is only counting his original Alien as canon with Prometheus, not any of the sequels.

As such, remember that the Nostromo was essentially a mining/transport ship, whereas the Prometheus is a heavily-funded research vessel.  Of course the technology onboard the Prometheus would be newer and more expensive than the technology onboard a ship whose sole purpose is to haul shit from point A to point B.

And if Scott's Alien and Prometheus are the only things that are canon to Scott's universe, then technology depicted in Aliens, Alien³, and Alien: Resurrection, as well as the AVP movies, don't factor into this discussion at all.

So, he wants to see, what, a picture of "Despecialized" being projected on a screen?  Or video of it being projected on a screen?

Why?

Thanks CA, I really appreciate that comment very much, but just wait until you see the new version U2 and I are doing, I am also going to encode a new DVD file for those with the V3 so they can swap out the vids to make a V4 DVD.

again, Thanks for the kind words.

Hey, I talk up your set to anyone who'll listen to me!  It's pretty fantastic.

What sort of improvements will the V4 version have?  I guess I should just go check out your thread...

Is the Imperial Edition DVD going to be updated to reflect the improved sound quality?

Not sure what you're asking?  Download it and play it on a 1080p projector if you want to watch it that way...

[removed as per request; dark_jedi, you should probably edit your quote of my post, too]

The Dark_Jedi V3 DVDs are my version of choice.  I respect what Harmy and co are trying to do with the combination of sources, but GOUT restorations are better for me, both from a purist standpoint (NO SE changes, no matter how miniscule), and from an aesthetic standpoint (while it's all quite seamless, I still notice the transition from one source to another; I prefer it to be uniform, even if the overall quality isn't as good).

Xhonzi's right - you want a 120Hz or 240Hz TV, you just don't want that SmoothMotion, or whatever fancy name your TV uses to describe CFI, turned on.  They say it's good for things like sports, but I don't like it even for that.

Definitely go for the Dark Jedi V3 DVDs.

Anamorphic, stabilized, cleaned-up video with a light touch on the color correction (what color correction is there is meant to bring it as close to the original '77 color timing as possible), subtitles that are designed to emulate the original theatrical subtitles (for Huttese parts in SW and Jedi), and the audio mixes for Star Wars include:

- 1977 Theatrical Stereo
- 1977 Theatrical Mono
- 1985 Stereo Remix
- 1993 Stereo Remix (the audio that's on the 2006 DVDs)

And, the kicker - and the default audio track:

- Hairy_Hen's excellent Dolby Digital 5.1 recreation of the 1977 Dolby 70mm Six-Track audio mix.

My god, does that track sound brilliant...

Empire and Jedi also have 5.1 audio made by Hairy_Hen, but they're not attempts at recreating the 70mm audio because, well, we don't have a reference source for the 70mm audio of each of those.

So yeah - I think Dark Jedi's GOUT V3 is exactly what you're looking for.

Goddammit, I thought Frank Oz died.  You scared the everloving shit out of me.

I'm fairly certain it's slightly different for every film.  Maybe not for the PT, but most likely for the OT (I'm sure the 77 and 81 SW crawls are different from one another, too).

But it is still silly to do it manually when an automated process can do it for you near perfectly.

Maybe, but I actually kind of like doing it my way.  It's sort of relaxing to me, if that makes sense.

See, all your methods use AviSynth.

First, I'm doing this on a Mac, which can't run AviSynth.  Second, I don't know a damn thing when it comes to command-line stuff - I need a GUI in order to do anything.

My method is time-consuming, but I'm happy with the end results, so I'll just keep doing what I'm doing, which is essentially PAL DVD > MPEG Streamclip to 50i ProRes 422 > Final Cut Pro to fix the worst problem areas > new ProRes file > CinemaTools for 50i-24p conversion > Final Cut Pro to fix the rest of the issues that show up after conversion > Compressor to convert from 576p24 to 480p24.  That's the simplified version, without going into the 4 audio tracks at all.

Also, this DVD is not OOP - it's just not available on its own anymore.  It's in the Revisitations 1 box set.

And yes, the 4% speedup is absolutely present.

Tonight's episode of The Walking Dead (season 2 episode 12) was pretty fucking good.  Definitely better than any other episodes this season, which has been pretty lackluster compared to the first.

Both the big event and the big reveal I'd expected from reading the comics - I'm quite satisfied with how both were handled on the show.

EdFarmer said:

The only thing I didn't like at all, was the lightsaber changes when Vader and Obiwan meet.

To me it's very similar to the Solo/Greedo change Lucas made, because it really changes the character of the character. If that makes sense.

That moment is a great illustration of the Good vs Evil idea and gives you some insight as to how the characters are thinking - Vader ready to fight (evil), Obiwan unwilling and defensive (good). Even after he sees Vader he doesn't activate his - only when Vader advances.

I think that changing that around really changes the characters.

As someone who's defended a lot of the changes Ady has made to people who bitched about them, I agree with you 100% on this one.

This, the torture-droid-mini-lightsaber-thing, and the Ep III music in the duel are the only things I legitimately dislike about ANH:R.  (The added slo-mo at the end of the duel bugs me, but I can live with that.)

From Moth3r's earlier post:

The Restoration team website mentions that the PAL video was a DEFT conversion.

As mentioned above, the preferred method of converting film-based content that has been hard telecined with 3:2 pulldown to 30fps is to IVTC back to 24fps then speed up to 25fps.

While a DEFT conversion purports to do this, it does all other kinds of shit as well. So you end up with video that has 4% speedup and blended fields - DVD buyers in PAL-land have been disappointed with the results of these types of conversions (Star Trek TNG and Futurama are two that spring to mind).

Do you know anything about undoing DEFT conversions?  If so, that would be awesome.

It would be if they hadn't cocked up the conversion this badly.  The blended fields occur too randomly for any automated process to work.

It probably doesn't help that, while the movie was shot at 24fps, the effects were all done at 29.97.  So some of those field-blending issues got baked in during conversion to 25fps, and aren't fixable.  At least that means I can actually get this to 23.976fps and have it be watchable, but it won't be 100% perfect.  (Though it certainly won't look any worse than it does at 25fps.)

I don't actually own many DVDs anymore.  I buy them, rip them as high-quality .mkv files onto my hard drive, preserving the audio commentaries and subtitles and all that jazz, and play them using my Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ media player box thingy.  I then sell the DVDs used, because, well, I never use DVDs anymore.

For movies that have multiple versions, I copy all of the ones I'm interested in.  Usually it's just one version (like the Apocalypse Now theatrical cut), sometimes it's multiple versions (like both versions of Army of Darkness or Terminator 2).

Anyway, here's what I have on my hard drives - well, this is everything that I know I purchased legally, as I'll freely admit to pirating some things.  Also, this is going to be a long list:

127 Hours
2001: A Space Odyssey
2010
28 Days Later
A Boy and His Dog
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls
Airplane!
The African Queen
Alice in Wonderland (Disney, '51)
Alien (theatrical)
Aliens (extended)
Alien³ (extended; replaced my DVD rip with a pirated BR-rip for the improved audio)
All the President's Men
Almost Famous (director's cut)
American Graffiti
American Psycho (uncensored cut)
An American Tail (replaced my DVD rip with widescreen HDTV rip)
Annie Hall
Apocalypse Now (theatrical)
Arrested Development (all 3 seasons)
Attack the Block
Avatar (super long version)
Back to the Future trilogy
Bad Lieutenant
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans
Barry Lyndon
Batman Begins
The Dark Knight
Batman: Year One
Batman: Under the Red Hood
Battlestar Galactica (miniseries, seasons 1-4, and Razor - fuck The Plan)
Beavis and Butt-head Do America
Beetlejuice
Being John Malkovich
Big Fish
The Big Lebowski
Billy Madison
Black Swan
Blow
Blue Valentine
Blue Velvet
Brazil (director's cut, or whatever the Criterion Disc 1 is)
Breaking Bad (seasons 1-3 legitimately, season 4 pirated)
Brick
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (all 7 seasons) and Angel (all 5 seasons)
Captain America: The First Avenger
Cast Away
City of God
Clerks. (theatrical)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (director's cut)
Coraline
Cosmos
Cowboy Bebop
Dances with Wolves (annoyingly long cut)
Das Boot ("uncut" version, aka miniseries cut)
Dead Alive (or Braindead) (US cut)
Death at a Funeral (the Frank Oz one)
Die Hard 1-3
Doctor Who (2005) Series 1-6
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (unrated)
Dogma
Donnie Darko (both versions)
Dumb and Dumber (unrated)
Dune (theatrical & Third Stage fan edit)
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (theatrical)
Eastern Promises
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Eulogy
Evil Dead (all 3; both versions of Army of Darkness)
Excalibur
The Exorcist (theatrical)
The Fall
Fanboys
Fantasia
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Fargo
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Criterion's slightly-extended cut)
Finding Nemo
The Fly (Cronenberg)
For All Mankind
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (unrated)
The Fountain
Freaks and Geeks
Fright Night (the remake)
Fringe (seasons 1-3 legitimately, season 4 to date pirated)
The Fugitive
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Futurama (seasons 1-6, counting DVD movies as S5 and Vols. 5 & 6 as S6)
Game of Thrones (season 1)
Get Him to the Greek (unrated)
Ghost in the Shell (theatrical, not 2.0)
Ghostbusters 1 & 2
The Godfather trilogy
Grandma's Boy
Grindhouse (theatrical)
Groundhog Day
Hannibal Lecter movies (Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal)
Harry Potter movies (all 8; all theatrical cuts)
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse
Heat
Help!
Hot Fuzz
Howl's Moving Castle
I Am Legend (alternate cut)
I Love You, Man
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Inception
The Incredibles
The Incredible Hulk (Ed Norton)
Indiana Jones (all 4; yeah, I know, but I don't hate 4 as much as everyone else)
Inglourious Basterds
The Iron Giant
Iron Man 1 & 2
Jack Ryan movies (The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger)
Jackass 1-3 (don't have the .5's, though)
Jackie Brown
James Bond movies (all of them except the '60s Casino Royale)
Jaws
Jurassic Park
Kick-Ass
Kiki's Delivery Service
Kill Bill 1 & 2
Kingdom of Heaven (director's cut)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
L.A. Confidential
The Land Before Time (replaced my DVD rip with widescreen HDTV rip)
Let the Right One In
Life (as narrated by David Attenborough)
George Romero's Living Dead movies (all of em, even Land [DC], Diary and Survival)
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (director's cut)
The Lord of the Rings trilogy (theatrical and extended)
Love Actually
Mad Max (all 3)
Mallrats (theatrical)
Man with No Name (all 3)
All 13 Marx Brothers movies (The Cocoanuts through Love Happy)
MASH
The Matrix
Mean Streets
Mission: Impossible 1-3
Moon
My Neighbor Totoro
Natural Born Killers (director's cut)
The New World (extended)
The Nightmare Before Christmas
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Office Space
Open Your Eyes (or Abre los ojos)
Pan's Labyrinth
Pi
Pink Floyd The Wall
The Pink Panther
A Shot in the Dark
Inspector Clouseau
The Return of the Pink Panther
The Pink Panther Strikes Again
Revenge of the Pink Panther
Planet Earth (as narrated by David Attenborough)
Porco Rosso
Primer
The Princess Bride
Pulp Fiction
Pushing Daisies (both seasons)
[REC] (1 and 2)
Requiem for a Dream (uncut)
Riddick movies (Pitch Black, Chronicles, and Dark Fury)
The Road
Road to Perdition
Role Models (unrated)
The Rules of Attraction
Run Fatboy Run
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Shaun of the Dead
The Shawshank Redemption
Sherlock (series 1 legitimately, series 2 pirated)
The Shining
Six-String Samurai
Snatch.
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
Spaced (both series)
Spider-Man
Spider-Man 2
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold
Star Wars trilogy (still have the GOUT DVDs; DJ's GOUT V3 is what's on my hard drive; I also have the prequel DVDs and Ady's theatrical Ep I)
Stargate (unlabeled, so I don't remember if it's the extended or theatrical cut)
Taken (uncut)
Terminator 1 & 2 (both versions of 2)
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre ('74)
Thank You for Smoking
Thor
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three ('74)
There Will Be Blood
The Thing (Carpenter)
The Thief and the Cobbler (Recobbled cut)
This is Spinal Tap
THX 1138 (theatrical)
Tommy Boy
Toy Story 1-3
Trailer Park Boys ("The Big Dirty")
Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day
Up
Up in the Air
The Usual Suspects
Vacation & Christmas Vacation
WALL-E
Watchmen (super long cut)
Whatever Works
Where the Wild Things Are
Woodstock (director's cut)
The X Files (seasons 1-7 and the first movie, fuck everything else)
X-Men (1, 2, 3, and First Class; fuck the Wolverine movie)
Youth in Revolt
Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Wow...so yeah, that's everything that I've purchased legitimately.  There's probably more that I've deleted over the years because I never watched it and needed hard drive space.

I guess I should post in the "obsessions" topic - making lists definitely falls under that category for me.

They don't, not exactly.  The positioning is the same, but the letters are slightly different.  They're quite similar, but not exactly the same.

Ooh, Michael Fassbender as Dracula...now there's an idea...

And I love the idea of Rutger Hauer as Van Helsing.

To bring this thread to a somewhat less "artsy" level...

Goon was the last movie I've sen.  It's a surprisingly good hockey movie.  Well, I guess it's more of a movie about fighting than about hockey, but they kind of go hand in hand.  I like seeing Seann William Scott in a more subdued, un-Stiffler-ish role.  And Alison Pill is adorable.

Hugo was amazing, and probably the single best use of 3D I've ever seen, Avatar included.  We watched so many of those old silent movies in film school on small screens, and it was amazing to see them properly in a theater.  Especially the color-tinted version of A Trip to the Moon.  I just wish they'd had time to show the entire film, but that would've (obviously) ground the story to a halt.

I don't know if I've sung the praises for Attack the Block here yet, but if I have I'm doing it again.  Such an excellent movie, tons of fun.  I've seen it about a dozen times now and I'm still not bored with it.

The Fright Night remake was pretty good, too.  Haven't seen the original, sadly, but I quite liked the new one.  Pretty sure David Tennant's role was written for Russel Brand, but Tennant did an excellent job with it.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol was very good.  Only one viewing and it's become my favorite of the M:I movies.  Wish I could've seen it in IMAX, though.

Super is the demented bastard stepchild of Kick-Ass.  Incredibly fucked up, but in a good way.

I'm thinking about watching the Director's Cut of Babylon A.D. tomorrow.  Never seen any version of it, but it's my understanding that the theatrical cut sucks really hard and the director's cut is pretty good.  Opinions?

captainsolo said:

I graduated back in May after managing to get my Film BFA in three years. 8 months later...still nothing. Job searching every single day online and in person becomes unbelievably tiresome.

Sounds exactly like me.  Except for the part about graduating in 3 years.  It took me all 4.

Breaking Bad (@Nanner)
Oh wow.  You don't even know.  Season 4 of Breaking Bad is the best ~13 hours of television I've ever seen in my life.

Justified
I just started watching this.  Only 2 episodes in at this point.  The pilot was great, but the second episode had quite a different feel to it, and I wasn't nearly as impressed as I was by the first one.  I'll definitely continue watching through at least the first season, but I really hope it begins to deliver on the promise of the first episode at some point.

Game of Thrones
I've also been rewatching Season 1 with a friend who hadn't seen it.  Hilarious watching her reactions.  It's also the first time I've rewatched it since reading the books (well, I'm only 1/4 of the way through A Dance with Dragons), and there's so much foreshadowing I missed the first time around that it's ridiculous.

Fringe
The fourth season has definitely gotten more interesting in the last 6-7 episodes - it's still not quite up to Season 3 standards, and I think we haven't seen nearly enough of Red Universe this season, but it definitely hasn't overstayed its welcome just yet. 

I do have to say, though, three of the episodes this season have been some of the best of the entire run - "One Night in October," "Welcome to Westfield," and "The End of All Things" were all just friggin' brilliant.  In fact, "One Night in October" has actually become my favorite of the entire series so far - yes, even surpassing "Peter" and "White Tulip."

TVLine has just upgraded its renewal chances from "could go either way" to "a safe bet" now that Terra Nova has been cancelled, which I'm happy about, but I think they need to plan Season 5 as the last season.  I couldn't deal with the show ending on a cliffhanger like the last 3 seasons have, with no resolution.  I was shocked it got renewed for a fourth season, and it'll be a miracle if it gets renewed for a fifth, but I think it's incredibly stupid to think there's even the possibility of it getting a sixth at all.

Parks and Recreation (plus Archer and Community, in passing)
This season of Parks and Rec has been the second most consistently funny show of the year after Archer (which got kinda dark last week).  While I'm ecstatic that we're getting Community back next week (which I maintain is the best show on NBC - it'll probably beat Parks and Archer for funniest-of-the-year title when it comes back), I wish they'd have put The Office on hiatus to make room for it instead of Parks.

Also, not enough Paul Rudd since he was introduced as Leslie's City Council adversary.

Shameless (US)
I don't know about you guys, but I've been enjoying this season a lot more than some of my friends have been.  I just wish Steve would leave and stay gone.  Can't fucking stand him.  I am very glad that Lip is getting more focus this season, he's my favorite.  Frank's kind of fallen into the background, though...and the ending of this week's episode pissed me off, just because I really didn't want Monica to come back, either.

Unsupervised
This show has grown on me a lot more than I expected it to.  Russ is hilarious.

Dexter
This season sucked so bad that I was ready to give up on the show until the last 30 seconds of the season.

Yeah, I think that's about it.  I've been gone so long I could fill pages with what I've been watching since I vanished, but I'll limit it to what I've got here now.

Oh wait, one more:

Sherlock Series 2
Was nothing short of absolutely fucking brilliantly amazing.  Especially the finale, which surprised me since its writer was responsible for the weakest Series 1 episode.  God, Moriarty, man...I was very iffy on his portrayal in the Series 1 finale, but holy shit did Andrew Scott change my mind.

Well, I'm back, but unfortunately the hard drive on which my project files were stored failed on me a couple months ago, and I didn't have any backups.

BUT!

I do still have both DVD9's (the Region 2 Revisitations and Region 1 discs), and I still remember most of what I learned when I was going through this the last time.

The upshot of which is that I'm going to be converting the PAL disc to a ProRes 422 .mov tonight, and loading it up into Final Cut tomorrow.  I'm going to try to fix as much of the interlacing problems as I can while it's still at 576i25, then convert it to 576p23.976 and fix any other problems I run across, then resize that down to 480p23.976.

Because I'm sure some of you have been looking forward to this, and my intentions with the DVD-9 authoring will require more time than the conversion of the video itself, I'm going to first release this as either an .mkv or .mp4 file, in order to get it out there ASAP.  The DVD9 (and possibly a DVD5) will come later.

I'm hoping the video work won't take super crazy long, but I really can't promise anything - I do know what I'm getting into better this time than I did the first go-round, so I'm hoping it'll get done quickly, but this is still 90 minutes that I have to go through shot-by-shot, and in some cases (the goddamn ending in particular, with all the 1-frame flashes) frame-by-frame.  So I won't speculate on how long it will actually take.  I want to get this done quickly, but I want it to be done right at the same time, and believe me when I tell you that the video on these discs is a mess.

But I promise you this will get done.  And I'm sorry this project's been dead in the water for so long.  I intend to rectify that as quickly as possible.

Could you add me to the list to be notified when this is up again?  I'd love to hear this film properly.

I'm gone for a little while, and I come back to this?  O.O

Holy shit, where do I sign up?