ChainsawAsh

Yeah - I guess James Cameron got dibs on the name "Avatar" before Shyamalan got to work on the movie based on the show, so they changed the title of that to just The Last Airbender to avoid confusion between the two.

DarkFather, they changed the name of M. Night Shyamalan's movie based on the Avatar anime - it's now called The Last Airbender.  The Avatar they're talking about is James Cameron's new 3-D sci-fi movie.

I've started official work on this project today!  I know, I know, this thread's been here since February, and I have the new logos and the Empire crawl, but those were all proof-of-concept tests, none of which will appear (in that form) in the final project.

I'll be editing the first post soon to reflect this, but the project has now evolved into my ideal Star Wars Trilogy - while it was originally a preservation of Star Wars as is, of Empire with one change (the crawl), and a massive re-edit of Jedi, it's now more than that.

I'll be using Adywan's Revisited edits as a base, which means for now I can only work on Star Wars - ESB and ROTJ will have to wait until Ady's done with them, respectively.  Why do this and not start my own work from scratch?  Several reasons:

- Ady's ANH:R was nearly perfect - I just want to improve on it so it *is* perfect (to me)
- Ady's work is much higher quality than the GOUT
- Ady has done things I couldn't possibly do that I feel are necessary for this project (to name one thing, the Emperor hologram in ESB)

What's that?  Nearly perfect, you say?  Well, what isn't perfect about it?  Here's what:

- Ady's edits still acknowledge the existence of prequels, which is (to me) unacceptable - after all, the whole point of this project is to remove any and all reference to the fact that any films besides these three exist in the series
- Too many SE additions are still there (fucking dewbacks)
- Prequel music (while the music is the one and only good thing to come out of the PT, see above)
- The bizarre needle-lightsaber-thing

But wouldn't using the GOUT eliminate every one of these problems?  Yes, but then we have other problems:

- Poor quality video
- Bad lightsaber rotoscoping (an SE change that never happened that I would have welcomed)
- Other problems

But how will I get rid of things like the torture droid lightsaber and the excessive SE additions?  Why, I'm glad you asked.  I've kindly asked Dark_Jedi to help me out by letting me use his cleaned-up GOUT for my project.  Anything in Revisited that I'm not particularly fond of (like Greedo's subtitles) will have GOUT video dropped in if the quality difference isn't overly distracting, or a certain portion of the frame will be digitally painted over with the GOUT (something I'm looking forward to teaching myself how to do).

I'm going to be using the GOUT as a guide for this, as well, because I think, editing-wise, the theatrical cut is nearly flawless.  I'll also, as previously stated, be using the mono mix as the basis for this edit.

I'm converting the DVD-9 of ANH:R as I type this to an Avid lossless codec, and will begin work as soon as it's done.  Once I receive Dark_Jedi's cleaned-up-GOUT copies, I'll convert that as well, and the project should start getting done a lot faster than it has been.

Oh, and to alleviate some of the technical problems I seem to have encountered in my tests, I'll be rendering all my effects (crawls, new credits) at HD resolution, then downscaling in Avid to SD (Avid allows for different resolutions in the same timeline, which is how The Dark Knight was edited), per Ady's suggestion.

To ADYWAN and DARK_JEDI:

If either one of you have a problem with me using your work as a starting point for mine (both of you WILL be credited in my new set of end credits), please just let me know and I'll be more than happy to just go back to my original plan of using the GOUT exclusively for this project.  No hard feelings if you'd rather me not use your work, I'd totally understand.

Damn it, Ady - I was actually looking forward to you killing a major character (Lando or not).  Ah, well, at least everyone else will be ecstatic.

Good one, though :-)

I was considering doing a "Unofficial Purist Edition" of ROTJ:R, even though I am a very strong advocate for massive changes to ROTJ, especially the Jabba's Palace scenes and the ending.  But I understand that people don't want to see the OT go through such massive changes, and it would be very disheartening for me to see people love ANH:R and ESB:R so much, only to (like in Histeria's case) not even give ROTJ:R a chance because of said changes.

Then again, I might not.  This is a long way away anyway (wow ... that looks very strange ... ), and I don't know if Ady would be okay with me doing any sort of "Unofficial Purist Edition" of any of his "Revisited" edits.

We'll see when the time comes.

Slightly off topic, but it's my topic so I guess I'm allowed to do that =P

I remember a while back that someone (Neil?) made a fixed version of the 2004 DVD 5.1 audio for ANH.  Does anyone still have this?  I'm trying to make a "complete" preservation set, with literally everything in it that I can find (part of the reason I started this thread, as well), and I'd like to replace the audio on ANH's 2004 DVD with a fixed version.

Way to shit over a bunch of good directors because of 1 or 2 sub-par films they were involved in.

Say what you want about Spielberg's recent films, but the dude's still an amazing director.  Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can, Saving Private Ryan, Amistad - all recent Spielberg films made in the PT era, all fantastic.  It's not like he hasn't made shitty movies in the past, when he was "on top of his game" - 1941, Hook, any Indy sequel ...

And you know Fincher's done many great movies besides the great (but way too obsessed-over) Fight Club - Se7en, Zodiac, Panic Room.

And I fucking loved The Green Mile, The Majestic and The Mist, so I don't know how you can possibly compare him to the shitheads that are M. Night Shyamawhatthefuckever and Michael Bay.

Sky, sometimes I think you don't actually formulate your own opinions, you just see whatever the majority of the people you talk to (online and off) think about it, then you echo that sentiment 10x more vehemently in a long, disjointed rant to make it seem like it's actually your opinion.

That's fine if the music is great, I just think the idea of a soundtrack for a book is a rather stupid idea, regardless of the quality of the music.

He's said he won't do that.

Really?  It's a soundtrack for a book?  That's fucking stupid.

@Ripplin - I'm fairly certain that the music was done for the video game and not the book, so it's not *that* weird - there are a lot of video game soundtracks out there.

@Darthmunky - he's not talking about audio books, it's the score for the video game.

Hahaha!  I've never noticed that, but now I'll never be able to look at that scene again without thinking about it ...

adywan said:

But a DVD version of a colour corrected theatrical TPM in the near future is highly likely

The purist in me likes this idea a lot, especially since TPM is (sadly) the best of the prequels, and the added scenes for the Special DVD Edition killed the pacing.

If Ady says he can do it by 2010, then he'll do it by 2010.  Besides, what good does bitching do about it?  He won't do it faster just because you want it tomorrow - and even if he did, it wouldn't be as good as it would be if he took his time, which is what he's doing.

There's doing it fast, and doing it right.  Based on what we've seen in ANH:R and what's been shown in this thread, Ady most definitely seems to be doing the latter.

Wow ... such a shame ... and Ed McMahon earlier this week ...

:-(

I thought the first was the biggest pile of shit I'd seen in recent memory.

I won't be seeing this one.  Ever.

Yeah, they're definitely different mixes, at least as far as I can tell.  The changes don't seem to be as radical as the ANH mix differences, but like you said, it's been mixed at different relative levels.

It seems logical, then, that the analog is the 1980 mix, and the digital is the 1985 remix.

I'd assume that since the "digital sound" was added for the 1992 pressing, that it's the 1985 mix, while the analog (assuming it's the same analog mix from the 1985 pressing) track is the theatrical 1980 mix.

I'm downloading your sample right now, but since I don't actually know the difference between the 80/85 mixes of Empire, I probably wouldn't be able to pick out which was which.

Cinefile isn't a file extension - it's the letters after the "dot" in the file name.  Images are usually ****.jpg, Word documents are ****.doc, text files are ****.txt - those letters.  Most Blu-Ray rips online are in .mkv format.

name_of_movie.avi <--That's the file extension.  If it's an HD video file, it's most likely .mkv or .mp4 - my guess is MKV.

This belongs in the "Requests, How-To's and Technical Discussions" forum, not Off-Topic.

That said, if it's in HD, you can never burn it to a DVD-Video (playable on standard DVD players) and keep it in HD.  You'd need to convert it to standard def.

If you have a Blu-Ray player, you can make an AVCHD disc (aka a "BD-5" or "BD-9"), which is basically just a Blu-Ray formatted disc burned to a regular DVD disc.

Do you use Windows or Mac OS X?  If you use Windows, other members might be better suited to answer your question, but I can probably help out if you use a Mac.

He announced recently that he's gotten access to an X9, so he's going to use that.

True though that may be, by posting about it while you're making it, you're inviting opinions.  Don't close yourself off to something just because it's not the way you plan on doing it - you can miss some really good ideas that way.

I'm not trying to say that you have to take everyone's advice - far from it.  I'm just saying that if you don't want any advice, don't talk about your edit until it's done.

That said, Vaderios has a valid point, but at the same time, the significance of Luke's green lightsaber, or Mace Windu's purple one are never made even remotely clear in the movies, so I think it's fine - you're just going to have a lot of people thinking it was a pointless change that doesn't improve anything (an opinion I happen to agree with).  But if you feel it's necessary, by all means, go for it.

Yeah, leave all the fancy lightsaber colors for the games - for the movies, it's blue & red, good & evil, until ROTJ.

Before the PT, I always felt that there was heavy symbolism in there - that the Jedi had been trying to take a "pure" good path and failed, while the Emperor and Vader had been taking the 100% evil path which, obviously, is never good.  But you need something in between to balance everything else out, and that's clearly what ROTJ was (should have been) about - Luke taking the "middle way," if you will.  I felt that Luke's victory symbolized a new era of Jedi that would follow Luke's "middle way" and become truly benevolent protectors of the New Republic.

Then the prequels showed up and the Jedi were ... um ... not like that at all.  Then AOTC came out and Mace fucking Windu had a purple lightsaber?  Really?  What the fuck is that shit?

Now I know, of course, that there was no symbolism to Luke's lightsaber color beyond "It shows up against a blue sky better than blue does."

Not a bad starting point, you've got a good amount of detail going on.  There does seem to be a bit of edge enhancement (look at the grey tubes to the right of Threepio in shot 5), but I'm not sure if that's inherent in the transfer or not.

There's a lot of cyan/magenta video noise going on, as well - hopefully that can be dealt with using filters later in the process.

You might be trumped by arnie.d's new project (Special Collection transferred using an X9 player, which is just a slight step down from the grandaddy of them all, the X0), but there's always room for multiple transfers out there.

And I'd be willing to do the DVD authoring (menus) aspect of it - I have Adobe Encore CS4.