Hal 9000

Yeah, I’ll make sure there’s nothing else to tweak. Nothing that will affect sync whatsoever; that is 110% locked forever. But I plan to, since this happened anyway, do a few tiny things like retime the custom end credits so the rest doesn’t need to be sped up, and do a new crawl for Ep1 with the same title font as the other two. And the subtitles will be muxed in rather than a separate download.
Unrealistic wish: I’d love to somehow take the BR of AOTC and apply the color information of Schorman’s HDTV capture project. Does anyone know a ~simple, ~straightforward way to accomplish this? The BR looks better aside from the very bad coloring. It’s not just the greenish shift, but there’s a lot more purple. You can see this as Dooku throws the pillar at Obi-Wan and Anakin and as Anakin rides his speeder bike across the sunset.

Lol, thanks for that. It’s certainly gotta be fixed just the same. And it will be, but it’ll take some time and I’ll still be working on other things. 😃

Well, I know one way to fix the problem, and am trying to find a faster one.
If I systematically go through the sequence and into nested sequences (sometimes a few levels deep), I can set the panning to be what it should be. But I can’t just change it at the top level because anything that’s nested will still pass along its incorrectly configured audio.
Even just exporting one track at a time at the top level won’t help because the nested sequences that comprise it are wrong. If there’s no way else to solve it, I can at least do it this way. Thankfully this approach won’t require doing each individual clip, and there are thousands, that comprise the final sequence.
That being said, TFA has very few nested sequences, being fairly straightforward and done over a short period of time, and will be handled first. I’ll finish the TFA project as planned before going back and fixing the prequels for one… last… reissue.

Problem has been diagnosed: all my sequences and nested sequences do not have the audio panned left or right like they need to, so anything in the left or right channels is heard in both. The solution is to pan everything on the left and right tracks left or right.
The problem now is that this needs to be done not just to the top level sequence, but to every clip inside every nested sequence. FCP7 appears to only be able to change this one sequence at a time, and so I need to systematically go through and do these things in a labyrinth of nested sequences without missing anything or losing track of where I am. Not all sequences are even listed in the list, so I truly would need to go from left to right in the timeline, going deeper and deeper each time there’s a nested sequence, and work my way back up. It would take quite a long time, so I am still searching for a quicker solution. It makes no difference how I export anything, because fixing the issue at the top level doesn’t fix it at the deeper levels and so the problem comes from the bottom up.

How do you not have them? I sent them to you twice in PMs. You should be able to see them in our PM thread.

No password. Just use your filesystem to extract; don’t extract within JDownloader.

Sure thing, but let’s take it out of this thread.

Do you have any sort of ETA for version 2 of this project? Or at least Episodes II and III. As you can see here: http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/TFA-A-Gentle-Restructure/id/50117/page/5

I am facing an issue that will require me, if we can solve that problem, reissue my prequel edits once again. Assuming the problem is solvable, I figure I may as well use your updated source if it’ll be ready soon-ish-ish. As long as it’s on the horizon, it’ll probably be worth waiting on even if someone solves my technical problem overnight. At least that way I won’t feel like it will be more worthwhile since I’ll have to reissue them all anyway.

I feel like I’m going to have an emotional breakdown. DominicCobb pointed out a serious audio problem that I have confirmed to be present in every single one of my releases thus far, and would be the case with the TFA restructure if I proceeded.
That problem is that in the front and rear channels, the left and right audio are identical. The audio will still pan forward and back, and in and out of the center channel, but there just is not distinction between the left and right channels. It is imperative this be corrected. I didn’t pour such an ungodly amount of care into these fucking prequel edits to let this stand.
I have (still) been using Final Cut Pro 7 to do my editing. I have confirmed that the source audio files are good. (After all, if they were the problem, they’d have to have gotten the same problem across diverse methods of ripping them across projects.) When inside Final Cut, the waveforms on the individual channels show up as correct, with the left and right channels being different from each other when appropriate. (As someone talks while walking offscreen to the right, the right channel comes in on the waveform.)
But, when playing or exporting the audio in Final Cut Pro 7, the left and right channels are the same. (When someone walks offscreen talking, the audio will pan from the center channel to both left and right channels, rather than just the right.) This is a chronic issue that’s been present the entire time I’ve been editing for the past 3 years. It’s like this across every project I’ve done. I’m not even using the same machine as before! When I got this one, I did a fresh install of everything!
So far, I have tried alternating between stereo and dual mono options for the sound monitoring, project, and sequence settings. It makes no difference how it’s exported, because it’s like this when being played in the FCP7 timeline. I can’t find help through Google, and I’m extremely frustrated at this point. I’m really hoping some genius out there knows the answer and can help.

Thanks, and I’m glad they can enable a better experience when you visit the prequels.

My niece and I had a good experience seeing the films for her first time in what I like to call the Obi-Wan order (or flashback order): 4,5,1,2,3,6 (7 hadn’t come out yet).
It let her see ANH first as is proper, then go on to experience the ongoing drama and surprises of ESB. Only at the reveal, which genuinely took her by surprise, did we jump back to the prequel trilogy. (I wouldn’t consider the machete order a viewing order since it skips a movie; if you’re gonna skip one, why not skip all three prequels?) After we see Anakin become the villain we learned he was, we jump back to Luke’s journey to rescue Han and go on to confront his father in the climactic conclusion.

And I also agree that at this point a person’s ideal order for induction should be 4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,6,7. Watch the original trilogy, then wait a while. Then see the prequels, then originals, then go onwards from there. If you like, use OUT for the first one and (fanhandled versions of) the SEs for the post-prequel viewing.
Can that be a new term we use? Fanhandling?

Oh, I’m not changing the title of the film. Just looking for a tagline so people have something to call the edit.

“Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens: Lone Star Edition” or something like that.

V4 of Episode I was released last Fall, and II and III were this February-ish. I’ll PM you the links to what should be listed at FanEdit.info.

Thanks, TK251. And there can certainly be multiple covers and posters. A modification of the real theatrical poster with our moniker could be included, but a cool teaser style trailer with the Sun closeup would be great to have as the main avatar.
Anyone have any other good name suggestions? I’m not married to “Lone Star Edition.”

I doubt it, since the site is still there and the listing says “coming soon.”

Cool stuff. The sunspot one would be appropriate. Could you still modify the text on it to feature something like “The Force Awakens… Lone Star Edition,” and maybe a list of screen names in tiny bottom-of-the-poster type print. If possible, could you adapt it so the star closeup covers a wider, DVD or BR cover width? Just looking ahead.

I’m not declaring “final cut” yet or anything, but it looks like we can wrap this project up sooner rather than later. It sounds like Jackpumpkinhead will be supplying the four FX shots needed (Hux exiting the room, two TIE shots, and unmasking Ren).

We gotta come up with a name for this thing. The name of the film won’t be changed, so maybe just a tagline like “Lone Star Edition” or something.
If anyone wants to, once we have a name, put together some cover artwork, that would be extremely helpful. My graphical skills like that are totally crap. I’m open to suggestions, but I think the same three distribution methods I used for my prequel edits will do (DVD5, 720p mp4, 1080p mkv). So, DVD and even BR covers would be fantastic. I’m in the process of doing a write up for the fan edit listing that can be used.

I’ll also have to grab a calculator and do chapter stops and subtitles. I’ll prepare English subtitles, and anyone is welcome to take these and do their own translations. If they can be finished reasonably soon afterward, I can include them in the release. If not, I can link to them the way I had to for subtitles produced after the prequel edits were released.

Then, we can book appearances on various talk shows and plug the edit. But it seems like this can be a gloriously short-term project for once!

And just see Finn’s gums flapping afterward?

Love the assassin buildup to the gag. It gets funnier because you see it coming. The voiceover as we see the necklace had me laughing. Very good stuff; It looks like avoiding the bulk of the ROTR spoilers will serve me well.

I may as well show you all the rough attempt at showing the fighters react to SKB firing. It’s obviously slowed down, and sort of looks like hot garbage. I do not plan on using this.
https://vimeo.com/171935900

Eh, I think not mentioning it at all does best to avoid awkward questions without raising new ones. If they thought he probably did, why aren’t they doing more to try to wake him up or extract it from his memory? If they don’t suspect he does have it (like Threepio makes awkwardly clear), it makes sense he would wake up and surprise everyone.

Correct. One goal, which carries a necessary second:
Move Hosnian Prime’s destruction to after Han’s death.
Do the little things to make it work (clean up the mess).

I think I may cheat slightly by also removing Threepio’s line, “It is very unlikely that R2 would have the rest of the map in his backup data.”

I had the chance to watch the workprint myself tonight. If I may say so, I felt it worked remarkably well.
I did, however, feel like one thing was missing: Leia reporting that the weapon was about to be used, to explain the apparent urgency as the Resistance prepares to head to SKB. So, I went back and took another look at the briefing scene. I was able to pull something off that I feel solves this issue:
https://vimeo.com/171864217

You’ll notice that I am unable to have her identify the target. However, this may be a good thing, since it would help explain why she didn’t attempt to warn the Republic. We see Hux tell his side that they’re targeting the Senate, and we even saw he and Snoke decide on this. But, Leia appears to only know that they are preparing to fire at all.

I think the happy nature of the post-SKB destruction is justifiable in terms of movie sensibilities, but I did a super quick mockup of removing the fighters’ celebratory shots, shortening the following shot so the music matches up. You can still hear some of the vocals; this was just a quick mock up to get the idea across, and it will be easy to polish later:
https://vimeo.com/171864218

PM sent

Yes, exactly. I really like the clip you’ve shown but I presume it isn’t the final form. Whenever you have it how you think it should be, upload it at full quality and let me know. But it’s not like I see it as obviously unfinished or anything.