Eyepainter

Just edited the film down to 102 minutes. The second half of the film is close to perfect now (and by that, I mean everything after Mace’s little lightsaber fight with Palpatine). The first half, however, is still in need of some work. The main problem I’m having is finding the right placement for the deleted scenes involving Padme and the future rebellion. It seems like anywhere I put them, they feel like they’ve been placed at random. Maybe I need to change the placement of a few scenes from the movie. Who knows?

CaptainFaraday said:

I’ve successfully exported the version with the new crawl, but no matter what settings I use in Handbrake, I can’t get the file to play on my TV (it plays fine on my laptop). I have a Hisence UHD TV, and I just can’t figure it out. It’s driving me mad.

I’ve had plenty of issues getting a file to play on my HDTV too. Fortunately, I have a blu-ray player that is fine playing MKV and MP4 files via usb flash drive. It’s possible that the TV flat out refuses to play any large files period. However, if it works on your laptop, that probably means it isn’t the file that’s the issue. If you exported it to MP4 or MKV, those two files are the most widely used for fanedits, so you’re probably fine.

Eyepainter said:

Insert a plot twist into Episode III where Palpatine is revealed to be one of the crab people from South Park.

In fact, let’s take it one step further and add this to the twist:

https://youtu.be/tV5wmDhzgY8

Insert a plot twist into Episode III where Palpatine is revealed to be one of the crab people from South Park.

CaptainFaraday said:

Thank you for the explanation! I’ll try to replicate that with mine and see how it goes (and you’re right, mine’s in 720p).

As for the crawl, I really appreciate that! There’s absolutely no rush, these things move at the pace they move. Life’s busy for me too at the moment, so I’m right there with you on that one. I’ll tweak the text and send it to you once it’s done.

No problem. Feel free to send it to me when it’s ready!

CaptainFaraday said:

Update:

I tried exporting with sequence settings, however, it produced a folder of multiple files in strange formats instead of a single video file. So, I looked up the sequence settings, and matched them (format H.264, preset HD 720p 23.976) manually. It worked, but, it’s added black bars to the top and bottom of the frame. I don’t think it makes any difference, but obviously, it would be nice to have it at the actual aspect ratio.

Also, the opening crawl really does look unprofessional. I tried with Blender but just made a mess of things; Eyepainter, if you’re still happy to render a crawl for me, I’ll send you the text. Originally I just used SirRidley’s crawl from LoE, but I’ll make some tweaks to it now I’ve got the chance.

Ultimately, the big victory here is that my computer can actually render a feature length file overnight!

Sorry for not responding sooner. Having a busy week at the moment.

Anyway, .mxf files are gigantic files. They’re mainly used for digital cinema. I tried exporting my Episode I fanedit in .mxf once, and it took up so many gigabytes it couldn’t even fit on my hard drive. So I exported the file to the DNxHD format and used the quicktime codec instead. The final result of that export was only 30gb, and Handbrake took the file easily with no issues whatsoever.

As for the aspect ratio, you can rest assured that Handbrake is great at removing the black bars at the top and bottom. I’ve been able to get away with making the second export smaller by changing the resolution in the dimensions tab to 1920x820. Then customizing the cropping to 130 top and 130 bottom, giving the pixel aspect ratio a perfect 1x1 output. Of course, it looks like your edit is in 720p, so I’m not 100 percent on the dimensions for that format. However, in my experience, Handbrake tends to crop the image automatically.

As for the opening crawl, I’d be happy to work on it. However, as I mentioned, I’m having a busy work week. I might be delayed a few days to a week before I can make it sing. But I will hop to it as soon as I can.

CaptainFaraday said:

Eyepainter said:

CaptainFaraday said:

Also: anyone who can do a custom opening crawl, would you possibly consider doing one for me? I combined the two opening crawls to change the title with a simple rolling crop, and it’s fine for my personal viewing, but now I’ve got people asking me for a link I’d prefer to do something a bit more seamless and professional.

Have you tried Jackpumpkinhead’s custom crawl creator? It works with Blender, and it comes with a tutorial for those of us who don’t know how anything works over there.

I don’t have Blender and I suspect it won’t work on my computer. I’ve forced it to never update about half a decade ago so that it wouldn’t mess with my software (some of which wouldn’t work any more if I updated). For someone who spends so much time on a computer, I’m somewhat of a luddite.

Edit: Wow that sounds ungrateful of me! That wasn’t intentional. It’s worth me at least having a look at it, and seeing if it’d work with any version of Blender that might run on my computer.

It’s okay. No offense taken.

Anyway, if your computer is having that much trouble, I’d be happy to work on it myself. However, I don’t know what I’m writing for the crawl, so I will need to know what I’m writing down first.

Also, I’m not sure how large the file will be, but the crawl files I’ve uploaded have often slowed my editing software down. So keep in mind that the file might slow your computer even more than it already is.

CaptainFaraday said:

Also: anyone who can do a custom opening crawl, would you possibly consider doing one for me? I combined the two opening crawls to change the title with a simple rolling crop, and it’s fine for my personal viewing, but now I’ve got people asking me for a link I’d prefer to do something a bit more seamless and professional.

Have you tried Jackpumpkinhead’s custom crawl creator? It works with Blender, and it comes with a tutorial for those of us who don’t know how anything works over there.

Just managed to bring everything down to a rough cut. Surprisingly, I managed to edit things back to 103 minutes. I’m not sure if it’s because I have a good memory or not, but I’m glad that I seem to be on the right track. I’ll see if I can find anything else that needs improvement over the next week.

CaptainFaraday said:

Eyepainter said:

Perhaps I’m too late, but if you need advice on exporting, here it is. Keep in mind that I’m using Davinci Resolve for my editing software.

Usually, I like to export my edits in MKV. However, that is not a feasible option in Resolve. So, I export the file under the same settings that the actual source has. That way, I don’t lose too much information. So, if the video codec is h.264, I export it in h.264. Likewise, if the audio codec is AAC, export it as AAC.

The actual export might take a while depending on a lot of things, like your computer, graphics card, processor, etc. But once it’s done, I export it again. This time through Handbrake (which I highly recommend if you don’t have it. It’s open source too). This time, grab the file you exported recently, and convert it to an MP4 or MKV format. Both formats do the job. I already said I prefer MKV, but MP4 is very popular and works on pretty much everything.

You can also customize the export in Handbrake using a wide variety of settings. You can make it lossless, give it a DTS-HD passthru, change the framerate to 24fps, customize the resolution, etc. There are a lot of settings in Handbrake, so if there’s something you want to do to the export, but you don’t know how, feel free to reply.

Once you’ve exported through Handbrake, you should have a working edit that is ready to be uploaded to the web. However, it’s smart to watch the file first and see if any problems or glitches show up (you’ll never know until you watch it yourself). If everything looks right, you can upload it to the web using either MEGA or Google drive or some other place I haven’t been to yet. You can delete the first export now (it takes up a lot of space anyway, and once you know the second export works, the first export isn’t needed anymore).

This is extremely helpful, thank you! I think I have Handbrake - I downloaded it a long time ago to try and rip a DVD but couldn’t get it to work. I’ll give it a go tonight and see what happens. I’m already expecting it’ll take overnight to render, my computer is old.

You’re welcome. And yes, I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes a while. I’ve done almost all of my exports on a Windows 10, and even then, it still takes hours to complete. Then again, I have to see if my new Mac is faster, as I’m switching over to that computer for my fanedits now.

Perhaps I’m too late, but if you need advice on exporting, here it is. Keep in mind that I’m using Davinci Resolve for my editing software.

Usually, I like to export my edits in MKV. However, that is not a feasible option in Resolve. So, I export the file under the same settings that the actual source has. That way, I don’t lose too much information. So, if the video codec is h.264, I export it in h.264. Likewise, if the audio codec is AAC, export it as AAC.

The actual export might take a while depending on a lot of things, like your computer, graphics card, processor, etc. But once it’s done, I export it again. This time through Handbrake (which I highly recommend if you don’t have it. It’s open source too). This time, grab the file you exported recently, and convert it to an MP4 or MKV format. Both formats do the job. I already said I prefer MKV, but MP4 is very popular and works on pretty much everything.

You can also customize the export in Handbrake using a wide variety of settings. You can make it lossless, give it a DTS-HD passthru, change the framerate to 24fps, customize the resolution, etc. There are a lot of settings in Handbrake, so if there’s something you want to do to the export, but you don’t know how, feel free to reply.

Once you’ve exported through Handbrake, you should have a working edit that is ready to be uploaded to the web. However, it’s smart to watch the file first and see if any problems or glitches show up (you’ll never know until you watch it yourself). If everything looks right, you can upload it to the web using either MEGA or Google drive or some other place I haven’t been to yet. You can delete the first export now (it takes up a lot of space anyway, and once you know the second export works, the first export isn’t needed anymore).

I have a major update. My computer had an “accident” and I lost my project folders for my fanedits. I still have my final edit of Episode II on a flash drive (Thank God), but all of the work I’ve done on Resolve is gone.

I have decided to use this as an opportunity (instead of a setback, which this obviously is) to use my blu-ray rips on my Mac, and re-edit Episodes I and II. This will more than likely get me approval from fanedit.org in the future. Plus, I’m hoping to finally (fingers crossed) get to that commentary track as I keep promising, but somehow keep failing to deliver on. I’ve bought a better quality microphone this time around, so I’m hoping that this one will actually work.

I’m saving this re-edit for last, since II is the biggest nightmare to work on. Plus, I have to restart my edit of Episode III, which has never been released. Rest assured that I will get to work on Episode II once I’ve completed III and re-edited I.

I have a major update. The computer I was using to edit Episode I had an “accident” and I lost my project folders. I still have v1 and v2 on a flash drive (Thank God), but as for all of my updates, I’ve lost them.

I’ve decided to take this as an opportunity to re-edit Episode I on my Mac using the blu-ray rips I mentioned previously. This re-edit will more than likely be acceptable for fanedit.org, since I’m using a transfer from an official release. However, for those who may be concerned about CGI Yoda, I’m working on downloading the schorman file of episode I to my mac, so that I can replace all CGI Yoda shots with puppet Yoda shots. So I will try to preserve that aspect of Episode I.

And no, I haven’t forgotten about what I said about restructuring the ending. That’s still going to happen. I also bought a better microphone, so I will finally (fingers crossed) get that commentary track recorded like I promised. This one’s connected to my Mac, so it won’t be too complicated setting it up.

Right now, I have to focus on completing my Episode III edit, but I will get to re-editing Episode I immediately once I’ve completed it.

Darth_Zounds said:

Insert these scenes into ANH:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiuxG_PQCoU

You don’t want to do that. What you really want to do is add that pink lady to episode I and establish a subplot between her and Anakin through the prequel trilogy. That way, he can cheat on Padme.

Replace all of Darth Vader from Rogue One with Jar Jar Binks instead.

After going through solution after solution, I gave up and reset my PC. I tried to salvage it by keeping my personal files, which did help since I still have the schorman HD transfers and deleted scenes that I’ve been using from the start. However, my editing program got uninstalled, and I lost all three of my projects, which means I will have no choice but to start over.

On the bright side, it could have been worse. In addition to the source files still being around, I made the right decision to keep my edits of I and II on a flash drive. So I still have the final products (so far), and I still have the files I’ve been editing with from the beginning.

I think this is a perfect opportunity to start editing my blu-ray rips on my mac. I still need to get audio for the deleted scenes, but I might be able to rip my DVD of Episode III onto my mac, and use those as a substitute.

For obvious reasons, I’m going to restart editing III first, and soon. It’s the only movie I haven’t finished anyway. I’ll get to fixing up I and II once I’ve finished III.

Still having problems with my computer. I tried getting a backup for my edits, and attempted transferring them over to my mac last night, but my mac rejected the Schorman transfers straight up, which is the source I’ve used for all three up to this point.

I’ve been thinking about the blu-ray rips I added to my mac a few weeks back, and I’m entertaining the idea of editing those rips. However, if I choose that option, I’ll have to do everything from scratch (including episodes I and II. Yikes!). I’ll be back to square one, but at least I’ll be able to hear the audio and edit it on the latest version of Resolve (Plus, I could submit it to fanedit.org). For now though, I’m considering it as a last resort. If I find a different solution, I’ll use that instead.

Bad news. My computer got updated and it messed with both my internet settings and turned off the audio. I tried restarting, but that didn’t fix the issue. Now I’m in a catch-22 situation where my computer refuses to search for an internet connection, but in order to fix the updates, I need an internet connection. I’ll see what I can do to fix the problem, but for obvious reasons, my edit is gonna be delayed. I will post an update when the problem is solved.

Replace James Earl Jones’ voice with audio clips from “as seen on TV” ads.

J_Scarp1273 said:

Sounds very interesting. Will you have link when done?

I will, although the minor stuff takes a while in my experiences with episode I and II. That is, video transitions, wipes, color grading, sound editing, etc. Given the time I worked on the previous two, I’m guesstimating it will be finished in a few months.

Removed some more dialogue and cut the edit down to 103 minutes. I like the edit so far, but I haven’t watched it in one sitting as of yet. I will see what else can be edited, but I think the general stuff is close to being done.

JackNapier said:

Redub Anakin with a Tommy Wassu soundalike

You’re tearing me apart, Padme!

Digitally replace all of Hayden Christensen with Jake Lloyd, and get a Jake Lloyd soundalike to redub all of Anakin’s lines from II and III.

Just realized that Yoda’s adventure on Kashyyyk really isn’t all that essential to the plot and promptly deleted it, reducing the runtime to 106 minutes for right now.

I’m having a little difficulty deciding where the deleted scenes featuring Padme and Organa should go. I’m gonna rewatch HAL and l8wrtr’s edits again to see how they did it and hopefully glean some insight.

“No. Jar Jar is your father.”