Eyepainter

SparkySywer said:

I never really knew how many Stormtroopers were from Minnesota. Maybe a fanedit is in order to reflect that?

Yah! Yah!

BrotherOfSasquatch said:

I’m curious… Couldn’t you just export it with the color grade, import that file back in and then add on the grain?

I decided to try this out. I exported the file in GoPro Cineform, put that file in a new project for the grain, copied and pasted the overlays, and exported yet another GoPro Cineform file. I then deleted the original file to save my disk space, and converted the grain file to mp4 via Handbrake. All in all, the first file was about 87gb, the grain file, 127gb, and the converted Handbrake file 10gb. It’s not my favorite way to export a file, but it did work. The downside is that the final result is very bare bones. Only one audio track, no chapter markers, no commentary, etc. It’s just the edit itself in 5.1 surround, and nothing else. So, those issues need to be taken care of before I can be satisfied with this. But it did work, so this option is worth keeping on the table.

I have another update. I finally tested my theory out. I redid the film grain overlays, replaced the cleaner overlays with filthier ones, and changed them around to see if my luck would improve if I exported again. And to my sadness, it crashed again. So, for whatever reason, it looks like I may have to sacrifice the film grain if I want to get a good export.

I’ve been asking myself whether to try again with the color grading or not. Ideally, I don’t want to. I’ve gone through a lot of trouble to get this edit looking good. But at the same time, I’m not a fan of making it look soft and overly clean.

I’ve been entertaining a few ideas off the top of my head on what to do next. One is to throw in a film look LUT. This would compensate for the lack of grain, but I would have to go back and re-adjust the Resolve FX features all over again due to the change in contrast such a LUT would add. Another idea is to use the techniques I’ve learned from Jeff Bartsch’s book, Edit Better, but I think those techniques are designed for someone who is more of a professional colorist than I am. It would also require me to start the grade all over again too, since it doesn’t utilize Resolve’s FX features, which my current grade does. Third option? Same as option two, but with a LUT. Fourth option? Get over it, and stick with the grade as is, warts and all.

I guess there are a million possibilities for the color grading right now. I’d love to hear some more thoughts on this, as I’m not sure what to do next.

EddieDean said:

I’d vote to skip rather than overdoing it. But, if your pipeline is near-lossless you might be able to render it all twice - once for everything BUT overlay, then a separate project to add film grain?

I wish I could say that this’ll work, but alas, I already tried something like this with my Last Jedi fanedit. The quality deterioration was visible, and I never took the second project any further than reviewing it myself. It’s a nice idea on paper, but I don’t think my work is near-lossless enough.

Hal 9000 said:

In ROTJ, as Luke hides from Vader during their duel, we now find a new motivation for him to lash out in anger toward Vader.

“Your feelings for them are strong. Especially for… Third Sister. So, you know Third Sister. Your feelings have now betrayed her too.”

Later, “Tell Third Sister… you were right.”

We had third sister, yes. But what about second sister?

I think I’ve made a breakthrough on my current editing woes!

So, after my announcement that I was going to change the grading again, I bought Jeff Bartsch’s book, Edit Better, and I skipped over to the chapter on color grading. I took some of the advice and set on grading the edit using only the shadow, midtone, saturation, and contrast and pivot options on Resolve. I also added in my favorite film LUT onto the timeline.

Well, after I graded the whole thing again, I tried exporting the file, and it still crashed. Then I realized that the only other possibility is video track 3, which contains my film grain overlays. I disabled that track, and presto! The file exported! Then, I thought to myself, what if it’s the film grain overlays? I went back, changed the color grading back to my previous grade, and while it did crash the first time, it got to 96%. I tried again, and it worked! 😄

So, it looks like the main culprit is the film grain overlays. I’m not sure why Resolve is having a hard time, because my Eyes Wide Shut fanedit also has film grain overlays. My best guess is that I used dirtier overlays for my Eyes Wide Shut edit, and for some reason, my computer can take those grainier, dirtier overlays better. The overlays I’ve been using so far for Episode I are cleaner.

So this leads to my biggest issue right now. What to do about the film grain. I could choose to get rid of the film grain entirely. This option would probably be easiest on my computer, but the drawback is that the grading suffers from looking so soft and clean. The other option? Go for grainy and filthy. Now admittedly, I like that kind of aesthetic. However, I’m not sure Star Wars fans would agree, especially since a lot of fanedits opt for a cleaner, light grain look. HAL9000’s edits are a perfect example of this. I should also note that as of this post, I haven’t gone back to do anything with the film grain yet. So I have no idea if I’m right about dirtier grain overlays being easier to export. It’s currently a theory.

I guess I’ll ask for others opinions on this. What do you think? Should I skip the film grain, or go all the way with it?

I have some bad news on the color grading.

Over the course of the last week, I’ve been trying to export my edit so that I can test the color grade on my 1080p HDTV. Trying, because every time I’ve attempted to export the file, my editing software keeps crashing in the middle of the export. I’ve tried a lot of things. What’s even weirder is that it’s only crashing when I export Episode I. I did an export for my Eyes Wide Shut fanedit, which is a much larger file than my Episode I edit could ever hope to be (in GoPro Cineform, no less), and it exported the file without any problems. I’ve tried exporting my Episode I file to my external hard drive. It crashed. I tried exporting it using a brand new USB flash drive. It crashed. I looked up a bunch of YouTube tutorials to stop the export from crashing. It crashed. And I’m at that point where I believe the culprit is one of the Resolve FX features I used for the color grading. I don’t know which one it is (I have a faint suspicion that it has something to do with the luminance), but this means that I’m gonna have to go back and work on the color grading again.

I will do what I can to keep the color grade from being changed a lot, but I can’t guarantee that until I’ve figured out why Resolve keeps crashing for “this” specific edit, and none of my other edits. My apologies for the inconvenience this may cause. If anyone has some troubleshooting know-how, I would appreciate it very much at this time!

JackNapier said:

My mood for the past few days is Batman mourning his parents in an alleyway while sad music plays and the camera spirals around him.

I’ve been feeling the same way this past weekend, especially since the overturning of Roe might affect my life due to the start of my transgender journey early this year. Even now, I’m not sure what I’m going to do if my own rights get overturned.

However, what I do know is that despair and hopelessness are not solutions. At some point, you have to let go of bitterness, and get up. I know how hard that is, but you don’t get anywhere by worrying and being miserable all day. You get somewhere by, to paraphrase the late Hunter S. Thompson, buying the ticket and taking the ride.

Obi-Wan Kenobi ends like this:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u61F_qvdid0

Thanks Mario! I hope the edit meets your expectations!

Just finished commentating about the Coruscant senate hearing.

ArtisDead said:

I’ve heard that ArtisDead is quite an artist…

Your edit sounds interesting.

Oh yeah, and I’ve heard about this Eyepainter. I hear she’s doing all these Star Wars edits too. She must be a hard worker.

Anyway, here’s the censored poster ArtisDead cooked up for my edit:

revel911 said:

I think what the version that worked that I have seen were using another language track (German / Japanese) and running through some kind of “alien filter”. Was curious if it was something you had tried vs a reply that you should do it.

Oh yeah, I’ve heard of that before! In answer to your question, no I’ve never tried it. However, there’s another faneditor who did. I don’t remember who, but I’m certain that edit does exist somewhere.

revel911 said:

Did you ever try any of the alien voices vs the bad accents? When I see those edits, though not perfect, it comes off closer to a more mature experience.

First off, thank you for the kind words regarding the color grading! v3.5 is going to be the first time I’ve ever utilized Resolve’s FX features for the grade (The second one is my upcoming fanedit of Eyes Wide Shut), and I’m happy to see such an overwhelmingly positive response from a stranger!

Anyway, I’m not 100% sure what you’re trying to say, but I think you’re asking if I’ve ever used AI-generated voices to replace the voices of the Gungans or Neimoidians (or just replaced the voices altogether). If that’s the question, the answer is no. I’ve gotten by with cutting out the worst lines and sound effects. However, I have seen quite a few editors try to change Jar Jar’s voice with both overwhelming, but also underwhelming results. I once stumbled onto a video where someone got an australian to voice Jar Jar instead, and the results were surprisingly wonderful (Sadly, I don’t remember the video, but it’s somewhere on YouTube)!

I also just recently watched a fanmix of the Rambo franchise called Three F—ing Bears by Gieferg, which used a Sylvester Stallone AI-generated voice for the narration of the edit. I could tell that the voice was fake, but it’s an interesting example of how far voice replacement in fanediting has gone, and if you’re not afraid of some very adult content, it’s a fun watch that I highly recommend!

All this is to say that while I haven’t done it, I’m interested in the possibilities and which direction it’s going. I also have some secret plans for all six of my Star Wars fanedits in the far future which I won’t go into for now (I’m more concerned with polishing them up for fanedit.org), but I think changing the voices might be an interesting endeavor to try out in the future!

Just finished working on the second half of color grading! Here are some more examples:

I got to see TV’s Frink’s The Ridiculous Menace, and now, I’m craving to see Episode II. But I’m having a hard time finding it.

I’ve also wanted to see the Heavy Star Wars edits, but I also can’t seem to find them either.

JackNapier said:

Hal 9000 said:

When Owen and Beru are found burned to death in ANH, add a few dozen charred stormtrooper remains, so you know they had to have put up a real fight.

That’s actually not a bad idea

Same! I’m trying to picture in my head why that’s a bad edit, and I can’t come up with anything.

Time for another update on the color grading! I’m at the halfway mark, and I’m about to start work on Anakin and Padme’s scene on the spaceship. I decided to use this time to showcase how things look for the first half right now. Here’s what I’ve graded thus far:

GMatias said:

I’ve been doing some behind-the-scenes work updating/replacing my source files from 1080p to 4K, and in the process have noticed that these new 4K files are a few frames off from the 1080 ones, which means any render I do will now have a ton of non-matched cuts until I fix them.

(I know that if I trim off the excess frames (or add blank frames), I can get the 4K source files to line back up with my edit cuts. But I’m also realizing that I would like to include closed caption info as a captions track. The workflow I’ve come up with for doing both is juuuuuuust easy enough to justify going back & doing it as basically another quality control pass.)

Since that will take a while and be quite the ton of gruntwork to accomplish, I figure my latest WP render before that point will just have to suffice as the WP render that I make available for comments!

The EPISODE V file is about 15gb and is uploading to Mega as I type this. Feel free to PM me if you’d like a link!

Indeed, I shall!

Thanks, Cap! It’s been a wild amount of work for myself and ArtisDead! Hope things are getting better for you!

Bingowings said:

Have the same pan pipe band busking on every street corner.

Make it a mariachi band.

EddieDean said:

In your absence, AlaskanSandman, we did a bit of a deep dive into TPM over here. You might want to check it out in case there’s anything there of interest to you for your edit!

I second that! I made my own attempt at an alternate opening that was suggested by EddieDean, and while that idea got scrapped, it’s a good example of the work that’s been done on that thread so far!

Alright, time for a couple small updates! I’ve been collaborating with ArtisDead on the poster art, and we have a consensus on Poster #1! He’s currently working on making it a running theme for all three edits (as well as some poster artwork for my Eyes Wide Shut edit) at this time!

Also, I’ve continued to work on the audio commentary, and I’m almost at Coruscant! I’m now more than halfway there on the commentary!

paja said:

Bobson Dugnutt said:

Continually keep adding Order 66 scenes from different shows/games/movies/unfinished deleted scenes to ROTS, until it ends up being it’s own movie

Not quite feature length yet although a whopping 20 minutes long…

https://youtu.be/tdF5F63JSAE

I didn’t fix up the audio much as it really wasn’t worth it. Enjoy!

Oh, I’m afraid the Disney corporation’s copyright block will be quite operational when your friends watch the video…

Choosing a favorite song is an insane challenge, because there are so many to choose from, but if I narrow it down to classic rock, it would have to be The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” 8 1/2 minutes of musical greatness in one song.

Time for me to give yet another thank you to ArtisDead! He’s been quite a trooper this week! Not only has he taken on the poster artwork for my Episode I edit, but he’s now taking on the poster artwork for this version of Eyes Wide Shut! We’ve been going back and forth between a few ideas, and he’s now cooking up two more. I’ll send an update when the artwork is done!