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Hal 9000

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Join date
14-Oct-2003
Last activity
20-Sep-2025
Posts
11,348

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Post
#792686
Topic
Star Wars Episode II: The Approaching Storm (Released)
Time

Thanks again for taking the time and thought to give feedback. 

The scene with Padme's family has some good hints that Padme is also falling for Anakin, rather than Anakin pining over a total Stoic who won't give him the time of day. It's a little odd, but I think it's an effective inclusion, with the precedent of being used by the Phantom Editor.

Dooku is hardly built up in this film at all, and we don't get introduced to him until more than halfway through the film. Removing his alias Darth Tyrannus removes an ineffective red herring and makes it a little easier to latch onto the character with what little we get of him. Removing the Separatist leaders' dialogue helps center that scene on Dooku. 

I did keep the picnic frolicking scene, and I think it's good to keep as much of the romance as I could, as long as what remains works. It's a tough call with this, of course.

And the line "according to my information" has been addressed for V4. 

Post
#792645
Topic
<strong>STAR WARS: REBELS</strong> (animated tv series) - a general discussion thread
Time

Leoj said:

New trailer: 

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

 Ventress? Really? 

No matter how many times I tried, I just couldn't get into the Clone Wars 2008 series. I'd prefer Rebels avoid dredging up stale remnants of it. I still don't like the idea of previously unheard of Inquisitors doing the dirty work Vader should be doing, either. I hope Ezra gets killed eventually. 

I'll tune in and I'm sure there'll be plenty to enjoy. I'm glad that so far the story has been relatively isolated from the "big" events. But I can't help but feel that it is sort of gumming up the continuity by having all these tie-ins and Forrest Gump type encounters.

Post
#792548
Topic
Star Wars Episode I: Cloak Of Deception (Released)
Time

That's an interesting perspective about Qui-Gon's mentoring being the thing that finally sees Anakin win a race. That conversation is awful, though, and most edits remove it. If there were a more subtle way to make it clear he's never won before, I'd be okay with that. In an event, it's clear he's the underdog, and it's the debut of his own Podracer. 

I agree that it's a bit awkward removing the discussion between Anakin and Padme, but it's the best it can be if the jappor snippet is gone, because it won't be seen again in my trilogy, which it dictated by other goals. I'd still like to keep the beat with Padme acknowledging Anakin's sadness. 

V4 for COD will be coming very soon. This thing will never be perfect, but it's been pretty well thought out at this point, and I'm comfortable letting them alone with whatever flaws or missed opportunities that may remain. I haven't left anything on the table, but have given everything a fair mental shot.

Post
#792528
Topic
Star Wars Episode I: Cloak Of Deception (Released)
Time

Thanks for the feedback. I've told myself I've "locked" all three edits once I recorded the commentary tracks, though I've gone back a few times and re-edited them to match. Let me address your points in turn.

The "Weesa going' home" line seems fine to me in the context of this edit, just a short bit of non-slapstick silliness in the background. I did lower the volume on him as well. Also, one benefit of removing the entire underwater sequence from the first act is that Jar Jar is no longer banished. He's just a regular Gungan. Putting even an abbreviated version back in would require reintroducing this subplot. In my version, Jar Jar is just a regular guy and he's along for the ride. My motto for him was that he can stay as long as he behaves himself.

The podracing deleted bit was reincluded just so I could roughly recreate my musical score for the race the way I had years ago using DVD. Trust me, for V4 it won't even stand out as a deleted scene at all, with DrDre's upscaling job. 

The end credits do indeed seem jagged. I applied some smoothing, though I just took a look in Compressor and will try a few test clips using stronger smoothing settings, and see if it makes a difference. If so, I'll reencode. If not, I'll release what I've already done so far. 

You bring up a good point about Padme being cheerful in one scene, and annoyed later. However, she's talking to a small child in the first one, and even then she reads as unhappy to be there. She expressed disapproval with Qui-Gon the prior day, so it doesn't seem too inconsistent to me. I think, at the very least, the gain of improving Anakin's characterization as a great pilot outweighs the potential drawbacks. (Anakin is a great pilot, and Qui-Gon notices these personal things about him rather than taking a blood test.)

As far as the "this one's a decoy" scene, I agree that I like the part that I cut out. The reason is that I was using L8wrtr's idea of making Anakin the main hero of the end battle. Padme gets herself kidnapped, then Anakin blows up the ship, and then it's implied through editing that this is why the battle droids collapsed and allowed her to win. In TPM, Anakin's actions were seemingly redundant if Padme already captured the Viceroy and could put a gun to his head.

Lastly, I did remove one shot from the death of Maul, where Obi-Wan sails upward from the pit. I didn't want to cut it too short, either, though it is trimmed somewhat. It's a bit implausible regardless, I know.

So, I will see what I can do about the end credits. I do want to put the fan editing credits into the credits themselves, jarring speed or no. For one thing, I put a lot of work into redoing all of them so they'll look consistent, and it's the normal fan edit convention for these things. Harmy did what he did because he was restoring a film, rather than doing a fan edit.

Thanks for expressing your opinions about the edit. V4 is done, but any little things that can be tweaked without actually changing the A/V sync, I am still open to. :)

Post
#792303
Topic
Star Wars Episode III: Labyrinth Of Evil (Released)
Time

The main problem with that is I've been working in 5.1 from the beginning, and doing a mix in 6.1 would require redoing all the audio from scratch, not to mention upconverting all other 5.1 audio to match. Unless someone can convert the BR audio to 5.1, it just doesn't make sense to me to redo everything for a marginal difference in the sound. 

I could, however, export what I'm working with in a higher bitrate for the MKV version, though it'd still be mostly sourced from DVD audio (save for Episode I).

Post
#792174
Topic
Star Wars Episode III: Labyrinth Of Evil (Released)
Time

No, it'll be all three. I've covered this here in the thread, by the way. Ep1 will be BluRay sourced with grain added, and color corrected slightly to take the edge off the overall red tint. Eps 2 and 3 will use shorman13's upcoming V2 source, and are really just waiting for that to be released. 

DrDre's upscaled deleted scenes make a night and day difference, I gotta say. I'm encoding V4 of Ep1 right now, and Ep3 will be next because that's what shorman13 is releasing first. I'd like for them all to be out well ahead of TFA, but in the end I'd much rather be able to put the best of everything into this final release. 

Post
#792165
Topic
Star Wars Episode III: Labyrinth Of Evil (Released)
Time

Just little things. There's a few brief lines and shots that I reinstated, but the main benefit of v4 is that it will look so much better, thanks to Hundsdorfex's care with a few shots, schorman13's HDTV source, and DrDre's algorithmic upscale of the deleted scenes. V4 will be it, save for an encode using Emanswfan's regraded version. But I'm not holding anything back in anticipation. As picky as I am, V4 will be the completion. New commentary tracks have been recorded, with things being locked and set.

Post
#791880
Topic
...
Time

Since the cat was out of the bag, I tracked down the piece of fic so I could at least see what it said. I was comforted by the comments that the potential spoiler is a hope on the writer's part, and not necessarily, for all I know, a bonafide plot leak. 

Post
#790963
Topic
Star Wars Episode III: Labyrinth Of Evil (Released)
Time

Thanks to Hundsdorfex's amazing dedication, we have yet another cool little FX tweak. This time, it allows me to better integrate this scene. Not only did he recolor Leia's eyes to brown, but he painted out Bail's figure from the balcony so I could use that establishing shot. Also, I desaturated and recolored Alderaan somewhat to better match the footage of Natalie Portman.

https://vimeo.com/140614521