Jan

Ok, here are a few screenshots comparing the quality of both BD/MKV and AVCHD to the Lossless Source. Unfortunately the bitrate had to be substantially reduced to fit the video, several audio tracks and the insanely large overhead of the m2ts container (1GB!) to a DVD9.

Lossless Source vs. Bluray/MKV @ 15000 Kbit/sec:

Screenshot Set 1

Screenshot Set 2

Screenshot Set 3

Screenshot Set 4

Screenshot Set 5

Screenshot Set 6

Screenshot Set 7

Screenshot Set 8

Lossless Source vs. AVCHD @ 6500 Kbit/sec:

Screenshot Set 1

Screenshot Set 2

Screenshot Set 3

Screenshot Set 4

Screenshot Set 5

Screenshot Set 6

Screenshot Set 7

Screenshot Set 8

Well, my largest upload was Harmy's Despecialized Edition Remastered MKV and I have quite a slow connection, so that's not really a reference. However, I've seen people uploading untouched BDs of a tv show season, which comes in at 200+ GB, with a speed of several MByte/sec.

So if you know somebody nearby with a fast fibre optical connection...

Usenet? 100+ Mbit flats aren't too expensive for most providers and the better ones offer like 4 years of retention. If you released the rared raw images reel by reel archives shouldn't be too large, right? Of course it would take quite a long time to upload I can image.

Laserschwert said:

Ah well, I didn't demux first... but ffdshow was definitely the crux. It's running now, although probably taking a couple of hours still. As I'm heading to bed now anyway, I'll just leave it running. We'll see how that goes.

I just tried to create a BD with TsMuxer myself. Well, even without demuxing first it didn't throw any error and the resultant BD folder plays flawlessly with TMT5. The process took less than 30min to finish. However I don't have ffdshow installed...

If it takes several hours then something is really wrong.

I don't know in which way ffdshow could possibly interfere as it's a simple remux operation. Please try demuxing the mkv to elementary streams first. Install Mkvtoolnix and MkvExtractGUI2 and use latter tool to do the demuxing. Then import the video (.264) and audio tracks into tsMuxeR GUI and create a Bluray. Please leave out the subtitles first.

walking_carpet said:

hmmm....correct me if im wrong, but it sounds like the blu ray version of 2.0 will be the MKV file with additional audio tracks and a menu?  if thats the case, i may be in trouble cuz I have a panasonic dmp bd60 and it doesnt play MKV.  I've been able to enjoy 1.0 because it was AVCHD but this time I wanted to take advantage of the full bit-rates.

maybe an excuse to get a new player ;P

Yes, the Bluray will use the same video track as the mkv, but include some lossless audio tracks, a menu and a few extras. You won't need an mkv capable player to get it working though, because when encoding the video track, we already made sure it was Bluray compatible.

If you don't want to wait for the official Bluray to be released or don't need lossless audio and menus, you can as well get the mkv version right away and simply create a BD out of it using TsMuxer.

Guys, does the DVD5 work for you? I tried it in Total Media Theatre 5 and MPC-HC, and in both the playback doesn't even start.

CatBus said:

Harmy said:

The situation is very similar with Chewtobacca's DVD5 - no automated one-click software can hope to match it in quality.

Please consider this before doing your own re-encodes.

Is Chewtobacca's DVD5 available anywhere except newsgroups?  That's the whole reason I'm attempting my own encode...

Well, I have access to newsgroups obviously, so I could get it and upload it somewhere if Chewtobacca does not plan to. However, I don't have an account at either one of the file hosters, and I honestly don't want one, so one of you guys should tell me where to upload it best.

The Spanish and German dub that are muxed with the mkv unfortunately are out of sync. Fixed tracks are available on Tehparadox and Usenet. Maybe Harmy can update the first post accordingly.

Laserschwert said:

Do MKVs support multi-angle video tracks? I suppose it would be fairly easy to realize something like that in a container format like MKV... that way you could include multiple crawls and Greedo subs, at least in the MKV.

For the Blu-ray (and DVD, respectively) this is probably much more difficult, as I haven't seen a single fanmade disc that contained multi-angle. I'm only familiar with Adobe Encore for authoring discs and it STILL doesn't support multi-angle.

What you are probably looking for the MKV is "Ordered Chapters". You have to create one continuous video stream which includes all editions you want to use, f.e different opening crawls. The different editions are then selectable in your players menu. Unfortunately there's a pretty severe disadvantage: Only two splitters support that feature so far, namely Haali Media Splitter and the preferable AV Splitter (not LAV Splitter!). When using other splitters or some kind of hardware player such as WDTV the file will play as if the different editions didn't exist. I'm also not sure if there's a way so that the correspondent audio and subtitle streams would play automatically.

Bluray has a similar feature called "Seemless Branching". In contrary to the MKV, the alternate scenes are in seperate m2ts files. Edition selection is done via playlists and the main menu. There are several commercial disc with this feature enabled, f.e. Avatar and Gladiator.

Spanish Dub is now on Usenet as well.

The fixed German dub is on Usenet now. The Spanish dub will probably be uploaded tomorrow.

It's done when it's done. But I don't think it'll take too long.

Yes, wait until Harmy releases the AVCHD version which can be burned to DVD9 ;-)

The upload on usenet is finally complete :-)

Harmy said:

Also link to fixed German audio is now up on teh, Spanish to follow soon.

I'll upload both to Usenet later. Thanks.

b0bafett said:

Nice time for me to start having issues w/ Easynews...they're up to file 161 but 6 of the files are incomplete or missing off of their servers!

Does grabbing the nzb from either nzbindex or binsearch fix your problem? If the files are not intact this way either, then wait some hours for Easynews to update the files on their servers. If they don't, you can download these files from Google Drive f.e., rename them and extract the archive. Or alternatively download some of the par2 files. They allow repair if at least 90% of the blocks are ok.

YanniD said:

The link you have published shows complete files up to part133.rar, part134.rar is incomplete (and only uploaded 21 minutes ago) and there are no par2 repair files.

I guess it is possible the remaining files are still uploading, but right now via binsearch.info and newzbin indexers, there are not enough complete files to download the mkv via usenet.

Would it be safe to start downloading these usenet files in anticipation of fully complete files being available in due course?  With all the rapid takedown notices being issued by the MPAA, I'm a little concerned the files could disappear and I be left with an incomplete orphan.  In these circumstances, it makes sense to publish exactly the same files on usenet and filesharing sites which are interchangeable, so that a complete set can still be obtained if one site loses some or all of them.

I'm really looking forward to watching the mkv:  thanks Harmy and happy birthday.

Yes, the upload is still in progress, but the rar archive should be finished in about an hour with the par2 set taking about 5 hours more. You can download all complete files now and the rest of them later, that's really unproblematic.

Don't worry about takedown notices on usenet. They happen, yes, but are extremely rare. Chances are at least 99.9% the files will be available until the retention of your provider is met.

The rar files on usenet and filesharing sites are 100% the same, except that I renamed them. The par2 set however is different on usenet.

b0bafett said:

To whoever is posting this to Usenet, why did you stop posting in a.b.starwars at file 117, then continue the post in a.b.hdtv?

Also as a FYI - file #106 didn't post.  (I plan on just downloading a par file & rebuilding it, but others might not know what or how to do that.)

Nzbindex.nl and binsearch both report that everything is complete up to part128 on a.b.starwars and a.b.hdtv. And that's exactly what's shown in my upload program as well. Furthermore, part106 downloads just fine and is fully complete.

Probably the site you're grabbing the nzb from has not updated its index for a.b.starwars lately where as for a.b.hdtv it has. 

Harmy said:

Jan said:

Harmy, I think it's a brilliant idea to create such a featurette and put it on youtube :-)

For those of you who want the DVD5, the guy who did the encode is currently uploading it to usenet it seems.

Is he now? I hope he knows I can't download it from there. Chewtobacca?

The posting "DeEdv2.0_NTSC_DVD5.par2" by a guy called SmokingWookie is in progress, yes.

@Rox64: I'd recommend not to mux the two parts that way.

Well, even if your ISP provided usenet access, it'd probably be limited to text groups only. So first of all, you need to get an account at one of the premium providers which offer access to binary groups such as alt.binaries.starwars, too.

Myriad of them exist, but they all are not free of charge (test accounts do exist, but are very limited). Here's a good point to start: http://usenetcompare.com. Accounts that are unlimited in download volume sell for about 10$ a month.

Now there are two features the providers differ. The first one is the so called retention, which is the maximum time a file is accessible after it's been uploaded and usually is between 2 and 4 years. The second one is speed of course. The given speed is almost always met except when the age of the upload is close to the retention. The content however is the same among all providers.

Once you have an account, go to nzbindex.nl, which is like a usenet search engine. Click on "Groups" on the very top and select alt.binaries.starwars to view this groups content. If you find an upload you want to get, just click on "Download" and a .nzb file will be created.

To finally download it you need a usenet client. I recommend the free version of alt.binz. Enter your account details there, open the .nzb file and start the download.

If you got any further questions just feel free to ask :-)

Oh, and I'd say you get Star Wars - Harmy's Despecialized Edition Remastered, which is just beyond impressive.

Harmy, I think it's a brilliant idea to create such a featurette and put it on youtube :-)

For those of you who want the DVD5, the guy who did the encode is currently uploading it to usenet it seems.

budwhite said:

Jan said:

For the usenet upload the rar files have simply been renamed from Deed2.0 to Fixed_Deed2.0. The par2 files however are different, so you'd need to redownload them at myspleen.

Besides, 28% (50 files) have been uploaded to usenet so far, with approximately 1.5 days to go. So I guess downloading it from my spleen would be faster anyway.

Since I don't do torrents anymore, I gotta ask; why is usenet taking so much longer to upload, too? I'm not in a hurry, just curious

Because my ISP offers me an upload speed of only 1MBit/s, that's why. But it's at 55% now and should be finished in 24hours.

Well, you need to add a few more days for the encode to be done, uploading also takes some time etc. Plus I don't know if Harmy wants to start encoding right away.