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Doctor M

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Join date
1-Feb-2005
Last activity
19-Jan-2026
Posts
2,553

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Post
#199039
Topic
.-The Matrix Hacked-..:Completed:.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/199039/action/topic#199039
Time
Nick, for now the first 5 people have been picked to receive these directly. Hopefully one of them will get in contact with you shortly (although the discs won't actually be in the mail until Monday or Tuesday (hopefully)). If no-one contacts you in another day or two, PM me and I'll give you the names.

Btw, anyone out there handy with the cover art thing? I can do it, but me terrible eye for color and lack of skills with art software tends to make it a prolonged project with so-so results.
The Matrix font is fairly common around the net and would probably come in useful. Any offers?

Also, proofed Reloaded again today. I can't believe as much as I've worked and watched these films I'm still enjoying them (/me pats self on back). Tweaked a couple points to clean up audio transitions.
I'd love to do something for the knock on the door by Smith at the very beginning (the shadow lengthens and then KNOCK, it's fairly abrupt). I tried several alternatives for cutaways and such, but everything comes off worse rather than better. In my estimation it might be the worst edit in the whole film.
Ok, will start proofing Revolutinons again later and burning discs tomorrow. I am a perpetual optimist.
Post
#198703
Topic
.-The Matrix Hacked-..:Completed:.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/198703/action/topic#198703
Time
The opening was actually the last script change and edit I made. I had the whole film finished was QCing it and thats when it hit me how important it is to the context of the film.

Neo talks about it, Trinity refers to it, and even Smith can't stop thinking about it. It's fairly central to the film and yet if you hadn't seen the first movie, you'd be completely in the dark.

I'm glad you enjoyed the first installment and I really hope the final part is as well received.
I'm not as pleased with it, but I can't fit it into my vision any better. It is a fairly agressive edit.
Post
#198617
Topic
.-The Matrix Hacked-..:Completed:.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/198617/action/topic#198617
Time
I finished converting Revolutions to pure film. I finally had to do some really cheesy things like duplicating a couple of frames to avoid edit points that wouldn't work. You probably won't see a thing. The funny thing is one edit point I kept fighting with because the letterbox bars shifted slightly turned out to be on the source DVD and NOT my fault.

While I was at it I tweaked the audio in a few places just to avoid the possibility any pops. It should be fine all around.

So what am I saying? What I'm saying is if you get over to Demonoid.com and ThePirateBay.org you will find that the Revolution will be Bitified!
Cheers to you all who have been silently watching my anguish and put up with my bitching. Another day or two and the DVDs go out as well.
If anyone who formerly told me they wanted discs has changed their minds, please let me know ASAP.

Btw, I have noticed a slight sync problem in the Matrix 2 Xvid. Trust me that is not on the DVD.
In fact the Xvid of Revolutions is pretty badly out of sync by the end. As a result I balanced the frame rate (23.978 fps) so the beginning and end are bang on and the middle will be slightly out of sync. I probably should have done the same with M2, but there was a lot less problem there.

It would seem even with 100% film source and 100% direct stream copy, Womble still screws around with the frame rate. At least for all the extra work the re-encoded scenes are a million times better looking and there is no stuttering on stand alone units.

Consider the Xvids a taste, but if you want sync, you need to go DVD. Sorry.
Post
#198521
Topic
'So Fine' - Preservation Project (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/198521/action/topic#198521
Time

I’m just tossing it out for now (especially since I’ve yet to finish my current project), but…

So Fine (1981) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083099/
(from RottenTomatoes.com):
A naive academician is suddenly thrown into the crazy and often violent world of the New York garment industry when his father’s business becomes heavily indebted to a loan shark. In order to raise much needed funds, he creates a new fashion craze - see-through jeans.

It stars Ryan O’Neal, Jack Warden, Richard Keal (Jaws from Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me), Mariangela Melato, and Fred Gwynne. And the sharp-eyed will also catch Tony Sirico of the Sopranos (Paulie Walnuts) playing a goon.

I have been a big fan of this movie and as far as I know it has only seen release as an OOP VHS.
I’m going to make a DVD transfer of this because if anything were to happen to that tape I would be very very upset.

I’m going to TRY to convert it back to 24 fps, but I suck at that so if it all fails I’ll do some minor color and brightness type tweaks if needed.
Beyond that, not much. I’d love to get my hands on the deleted scenes that appeared in the rare TV broadcasts of this movie but I have no source for it.

Anyway, that’s coming up next from me.

http://adventureclub.postrock.net/temp/SoFineCover.jpg

Edit: Finished and released.

For further info, PM me.

Post
#198507
Topic
.-The Matrix Hacked-..:Completed:.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/198507/action/topic#198507
Time
I'm surprised you found the story that jerky. Nothing in Reloaded happened out of order and less was cut than in the DeZionized edition. All story lines were left intact. When a cut was made of an idea or plot thread it was removed throughout the film to prevent confusion.
Maybe I'm too close to it and know what I did. (At least in the case of M2) I felt if nothing else it was less complicated than the original version.
Btw, I always loved the jump-starting of Trinity's heart thing. Nice fx and good symbolism to go with it. It was in fact one of the things when I watch the DZ version that I immediately wanted to put back.

Post
#198320
Topic
.-The Matrix Hacked-..:Completed:.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/198320/action/topic#198320
Time
Anyone know anything about editing together different sources mpg2 clips?

Matching the GOPs lengths prevented the hitching between cuts, but occasionally I get a serious probelm.
Between the end of a re-coded clip (CCE) and a DVD Clip the video is rejected by DVDMaestro. That would be ok, there are alternatives, but watching the edit with media player causes a speed up right at the edit point. A DVD created within Womble freezes a standalone player.
I tried matching Field Top First (which I would think means nothing on progressive video), I tried fixing the GOP lengths, I tried closing all GOPs, nothing seems to prevent it.
Edit: Also tried encoding with the last frame forced to an I frame.
Post
#197873
Topic
.-The Matrix Hacked-..:Completed:.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/197873/action/topic#197873
Time
I am aware that some music transitions might have been sloppy, but under the circumstances I found few alternatives and had to settle for preventing real abrupt cuts. I'm sure there's a better way, maybe resyncing the soundtrack, but there's no way I'm going to try that any further (I did at 2 points in Revolutions).

Can you elaborate on the "silences?"

As for the Oracle scene, yup, rickety as hell. I made sure that the audio from Smith never stops or fades but is continuous even across the Oracle's clips. This was to allow any ambient sounds to overlay her dialog. I gotta say, except for the localization problem I'm not sure I hear what you do.

As far as Link missing the call I'm not sure I'd call it that. It was a creative decision for the transition. I noticed the CBB version had Trinity pick up the phone but not dial, the next audio is the ringing for Link who answers.
I liked Trinity dialing in the Matrix and Link answering in TRW. To keep the full audio for Link involves a ringing in the Matrix and again in TRW which is in too brief a span to be natural sounding.

I guess my bigger concern with the edit is any pops or techinical problems.

The funny thing is, your exceptions with this are largely the things I thought I got right.
I will tell you if you found the movie to lack fluidity, stay away from M3. It is definitely a rough cut more for the impression of what the movie could have been than a good movie experience.
Post
#197761
Topic
.-The Matrix Hacked-..:Completed:.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/197761/action/topic#197761
Time
That bad eh?
30 hours since the first complete d/l's and no comments.
Anyone not want the DVD's now?


Update/Edit: I just got to the scariest part in my re-editing of the transitions.
It's a dissolve that goes from one clip to white to the next clip. I figured I'd have to remove it and write it off as impossible. But noooo, avisynth rocks:
clip1=crop(avisource("smithwakes.vdr"),0,58,0,-62)
clip2=crop(avisource("neoarrives.vdr"),0,58,0,-62)
fullclip=fadeout(clip1,12,$ffffff)+fadein(clip2,12,$ffffff)
addborders(fullclip,0,58,0,62)

(If you don't crop first, the letterbox borders go white too, and that's just sloppy.)
Woohoo. Looks so much better than MVW!
Post
#197440
Topic
.-The Matrix Hacked-..:Completed:.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/197440/action/topic#197440
Time
Lots and lots of seeds now. Get it while it's hot.

V1.01 of Reloaded is now finished. (I won't be making a new Xvid from it.)
It's described in the first post, but some minor artifacts were fixed including a change in black level of the letterbox bars during the opening (which of course isn't present in the Xvid).
The fades were redone with AviSynth/VirtualDub/CCE to remove crappy artifacts in moving in the blackness. The pace is subtly different, but it's much cleaner.

Well, I await the savagery of the critics. I'm serious be brutal...
Post
#197366
Topic
.-The Matrix Hacked-..:Completed:.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/197366/action/topic#197366
Time
Note: Demonoid has trouble with seeder/leecher numbers from external torrents. If you go there you'll need to search for inactive torrents.

Btw, I did manage to fix 2 instances of bad macroblocks since building the Xvid, so the 2 you'll see at the beginning won't be on the DVD.
Also I found another flaw, the Oracle's voice that I replaced (at the end) for some reason is coming slightly from the left. This is a Womble thing since the audio clip is mono and should have come out center or at least equally left/right. I don't think it's fixable without building it back into 5.1, and I doubt I'll be doing that.
Post
#197364
Topic
.-The Matrix Hacked-..:Completed:.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/197364/action/topic#197364
Time
Sorry, I guess I was unclear. The audio sync errors are only when trying to generate an avi file (since the framerate is variable). The DVD is pristine (on a PC).

As far the issue with the standalone player: between a large number of close together re-encoded frames in both 30fps and 24fps, I think there were just some spikes in the bitrate causing the hardware to choke (but a PC has no issues with out of spec bitrates).

Anyway, I finally decided that this is going to be a clean 24 frame video no matter what. I spent all afternoon and all this evening exporting clips, adding and subtracting flags. Hunting down clips used, re-encoding clean with CCE using the proper GOPs.
Fade outs were still done in Womble but under 24 fps, flagged for pulldown and exported back into the project. The same goes for some titles.
There's one dissolve I spent hours on before trashing it and exporting the 2 clips.
I ran 2 separate sessions of VirtualDubMod (one for each clip), setting both to frameserve.
Generated an AviSynth script to produce a dissolve from the 2 VDub sessions, and then using AviSynth to pass it to CCE.

So you are right f1209, sometimes the answer really is simple. :0
M2 is now 100% home grown pure film, direct stream, accept no substitutes.
The video quality of the manipulated clips is much better. I've seen some artifacts (blocks and such) but no jerkiness; it's a real improvement.

Soooooooooooooooooo,
If you point your browsers to thePirateBay.org (or Demonoid.com) and do a search for Matrix Hacked, you'll find something to tide you over until I finish M3 and can get the discs ready. (M3 will take more than a single day I suspect).

Something special just in time for the Matrix's anniversary.

I wil update the first post... tomorrow.
Post
#197232
Topic
.-The Matrix Hacked-..:Completed:.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/197232/action/topic#197232
Time
So I had a plan so cunning you could pin a tail on it and call it a weasel.

And so far, it looks like it's working. (Btw, if you don't care about the tech stuff, move along)

It turns out that when I cropped and re-encoded clips even if I was matching the avg and max bitrates there would be a jerky-ness with occasional macro blocks or breakups between clips from different sources.

The answer was so simple I missed it. I was using CCE with setting templates I had built from Doom9's recommendations. The problem is that uses GOPs that are different than the Matrix trilogy uses. I was using M=3 & M/N=5 (N=15). The DVDs were using M/N of 4 (N=12).
I wouldn't have even thought that could cause a problem but it did. I did a test scene with my clips re-encoded that way and I matched the avg/max bitrates as well. I also tossed in a little unsharp mask in to help hide that it's an enlarged and cropped.
100% direct stream 24fps goodness with nary a hitch. It's 10x better than what I had.

A couple more days of work ahead, but it looks like I'll be able to ferret out all of these and make this pure film.

I think I see a light.
Post
#197163
Topic
.-The Matrix Hacked-..:Completed:.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/197163/action/topic#197163
Time
I spent the entire day working on this.

Short of a 100% frame for frame reedit, there's no having this as pure film.
If someone is handy with Xvid, you have my blessing to try to release some variant of this. I'm not ruling out a full DVD torrent, but that would be realllllly sllooooowwwww from me.

The major hiccup in matrix3 drove me nuts. That's the main thing I was working on.
It looks like it's a croped clip that went funny.
It was encoded CBR at 9200kbps with CCE SP (7pass) (knowing Womble would want to re-re-encode it). Bitrate view shows the peak bitrate to be around 12000kbps (no kidding). When MVW did it's pass on it, it was suppose to keep a max rate of 7500kbps. But bitrate view shows the clip peaks out around 9875.
THAT's why the standalone is choking on it. I suppose I'm going to have to try a new crop of that clip and see if I can keep the rate under better control.

It also means I have to watch ALL recoded regions on a standalone to make sure this isn't happening anywhere else. (Cough small glitch in M2 Cough).

I'm going to say this again, I can't make this perfect.
Maybe in another 7 years I'll redo this, but for now I just want to fix the worst of it all and be done. I am sooo sick of this project and Womble's crappy software.
Post
#196935
Topic
.-The Matrix Hacked-..:Completed:.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/196935/action/topic#196935
Time
I dunno what's up with the way Womble works. With the film and video framerates mixed that leaves few options (problems syncing the audio in an avi file).
I tried a lower quality encode using 30fps. It looked crappy (because you're actually encoding the pulldown frames and then deinterlacing them). Still out of sync.
I even read a bunch of guides and attempted (several times) to create a variable frame rate (hybrid video) mkv file. Don't get me started on that.

This project is pissing me off now. I've watched it on my PC (as a DVD image) and it's great, but getting it anywhere else is murder.

I killed 4 hours tonight trying to fix the worst hiccup where the line of dialog goes out. It created even worse problems (the movie cuts off 30 minutes early now).
I'll take another stab at it tomorrow, but I don't know what to do.

An Xvid/Divx version is indefinitely in limbo and I have 5 M2 discs burned and 3 of the M3 discs. I want to fix the worst of the problems since I'll bet I won't be alone. It's just been that kind of project.

If the stupid software synced the 24fps video to the audio to start with I wouldn't be having these problems.
Post
#196899
Topic
.-The Matrix Hacked-..:Completed:.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/196899/action/topic#196899
Time
Sorry about no comment for a couple days, but the project _was_ done and ready to burn.

Then I got a cunning plan to improve re-code quality and make the disc 100% film so a divx could work.

This involved:
Taking a clip that involved a transition effect or was cropped/reencoded with CCE.
Exporting it as a stream copy (without the transition) or just using the raw clip in the latter case.
Removing pulldown flags.
Moving back into Womble as 23.976 video. Adding back the transition/effect if there was one.
Exporting it re-encoded as the software required to match the official DVD video.
Adding back the pulldown flags.
Reinserting the clip into the edit.

Got that? Visual quality did NOT improve on the recodes. After spending a few hours doing 4 clips like this (there's about a dozen for each film) I had a transition come up very short of it's original length after doing this.
I packed it in...

Currently I'm burning all the first discs as we speak. I did find a problem that no-one might ever see but I need feedback on.
On some of the areas were Womble did it's Womble-y thing, a standalone unit I tested it on coughed.
Don't get me wrong PowerDVD is just fine with it and the standalone is a fairly old (and quirky) Sony.
On M2 it was just a short fraction of a second hiccup in music during a transition. On M3 I found a line of dialog that went out of sync.

That's just what I saw in a casual look at the scenes were I know there's re-encoding.
I'm sending these discs out anyway because I can't judge standalone compatibility against that unit.

If there are more reports of this I might have to go back to what I was doing last night. I need not say that it will be some serious work involved in getting that to work right.

It's more important to get these mailed than to do a lot of work that might not be noticed by anyone else.